Government contempt for transparency undermines reconciliation

Public sentiment dictates action after the discovery of residential school children's grave sites. It's not, however, going to be easy to try and compensate for Canada's long on-going official policies and practices that have done so much long-term damage to Indigenous communities, including government contempt for releasing information to the public. In the lead up to the election, the federal government's reaction to the discoveries was to pour millions into helping Indigenous communities search for residential school graves, and fund more projects to help heal past injustices. Some of those funds, however, are going towards bureaucratic measures such as establishing an advisory committee and a special interlocutor liaison office, and for projects such as a national monument. The announced efforts may bring more records and disclosures into public view, start more investigations, and result in some criminal prosecutions of those responsible for the abuse, diseases, nightmares and deaths that took place in residential schools. But it is hard to escape from the realization that burying evidence of residential school abuses has been going on for decades. Having the RCMP “investigate,” years later, crimes they helped engineer while they continue spying on certain Indigenous groups is hardly going to cut it. Establishing an annual Day for Truth and Reconciliation every year may leave 364 days unattended to. The Correctional Service of Canada recently told requester Ken Rubin that it needed more time to deal with an access to information request from 2014. Image courtesy of Ken Rubin Can we in Canada overcome a system that is hostile to the release of information? One that prevents full findings, suppresses many records, and that celebrates secrecy over disclosures? An entrenched system of excluding secretive cabinet and ministerial records from disclosure, while mandating a team of access officials to enforce secrecy laws to prevent much data from being quickly released, if at all? Such a system is very difficult for the powerful to toss aside. If anything, the slow death and exposure of a rotten access to information system, one barely dealing with requests, has sped up in pandemic times. An Ottawa Citizen investigation by James Bagnall found, as others have, that much of the slow-moving, antiquated access to information process collapsed during the pandemic. It was viewed by top officials as a non-critical, low-ranking service deserving to be placed on hold. It is no wonder that pandemic times reinforced existing creative avoidance tactics and lax access services. It was not just access responses that suffered from the partial paralysis of the government, and its inability to collect needed data during the pandemic. Its own government advisory committee, the Pan-Canadian Health Data Strategy Expert Advisory Group, told of large gaps in information, hampering effective responses to the pandemic. It did not take a pandemic to get agencies to this low point. A telling example is a letter sent recently by the Correctional Service of Canada asking if I could tick "yes" or "no" to confirm that I still want a reply to a request from July 22, 2014 related to data on Indigenous inmates and their treatment compared to non-Indigenous offenders. A recently released Senate Human Rights Committee report also found gaps in transparency at prisons where Indigenous people are over-represented in comparison to the general population. Such less-than-satisfactory access to information service and responses is not limited to Ottawa. Northwest Territories MLA Kevin O'Reilly ran into a bureaucratic wall when he made an access to information request for the minutes of regular meetings between mining industry executives and the Northwest Territories Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Investment. The territorial government claimed that those minutes had to be heavily redacted because mining industry representatives were providing “advice” to government that could be exempt from public disclosure. Meanwhile, the bits of the minutes that weren't redacted showed, said Mr. O'Reilly, that the industry reps were lobbying government officials on matters of self interest, such as getting access to land set aside for land claim negotiations with First Nations—far beyond the stated rationale for the meetings, which was discussing the economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. Having broad exemptions and a culture of secrecy creates a toxic environment not conducive to reconciliation, or to the public having a greater say in government. Shining a light on our past and putting together an enlightened future is a choice that can and must be made. Ken Rubin writes on transparency matters and is reachable at kenrubin.ca