What’s inside Ottawa stays inside—and there is no confidence that will change

OTTAWA—In this pre-election period with consistent votes of non-confidence, no party leader appears to want to challenge the excessive secrecy insiders use in Ottawa. There is not even an offering of catchy slogans and transparency promises—just insults and name calling. The closest Ottawa has come to thinking about breaking its silence on the issue of government secrecy is its edging towards releasing the names found in a decades-old inquiry report. Library and Public Archives Canada is conducting a selective public consultation on whether to release the names of suspected war criminals residing in Canada identified in the Deschênes Commission report. Academics have lined up in support of disclosing the names, while some groups are opposing that and trying to mount a legal challenge. But on the issue of publicly naming MPs who wittingly or unwittingly aided foreign attempts to influence federal elections, Foreign Interference Inquiry Commissioner Marie-Josée Hogue has squashed that idea. Meanwhile, in a few cases, there have been parliamentary committees fighting to get more unredacted government data, like on financial irregularities that occurred at the former Sustainable Development Technology Canada. On that matter, House Speaker Greg Fergus is being asked to rule on whether the government is in contempt of Parliament if it continues to withhold the requested records. The House Government Operations and Estimates Committee also continues to probe federal contract procurement irregularities, violations, and mix-ups, seeking more withheld data. What's surprising, though, is that the Access to Information Committee has not called the Treasury Board to explain and account for its announced vague multimillion-dollar ATIP digital plan, to dissect the costs involved, or to probe whether this empire-building insider plan will make federal-record disclosures even harder. Politicians busy pointing fingers at each other just do not seem to want to aspire to change the way insiders operate in Ottawa. Still, unravelling how Ottawa works is not a bad preoccupation to have. One secret corner of the maze of how Ottawa makes decisions is to be found at fortress Treasury Board. There, the little-known seven-year-old Enterprise Architecture Review Board (EARB) OKs and dispenses millions of dollars for the project plans agencies produce for IT, artificial intelligence, cloud, security, and other digital projects on a biweekly basis. One recently released, heavily censored set of access-to-information records summarizes some of the EARB’s internal discussions on AI projects, some with much public policy significance. For instance, the EARB reviewed the much-criticized Global Public Health Intelligence Network (GPHIN) that failed to stay functional and capture pandemic and world-wide health crisis data. The Board minutes notes that, in hindsight, they saw the earlier GPHIN as “a monolithic infrastructure architecture ... unable to easily or adequately incorporate new data sources” where there was “no monitoring of AI/machine learning algorithms.” Started in 1994, GPHIN was an electronic public health early-warning system developed by the Public Health Agency of Canada as part of the World Health Organization global outbreak alert and response network. But—as a Globe and Mail investigation revealed—the federal government temporarily shut down GPHIN in May 2019 at a time when more data and early warning about COVID-19 was needed. Then there was a critical 2021 auditor general review, and internal reviews. It's not abundantly clear from the parts of the record disclosed in January 2024 whether the reinstated GPHIN “Next Generation” collecting parameters are sufficient, and now currently operational and working well. It might be a good idea for the media and the auditor general to take another look at GPHIN's effectiveness. The EARB co-chair is the chief information officer of Canada who operates as a deputy minister of Treasury Board. This is the board where digital future plans on spending, and upgrading aging and crumbling federal IT systems are made—though thoroughly examining increasingly expensive digital architecture costs does not seem to be paramount in their discussions, and go-ahead decisions made behind closed doors. Project costs connected to digital “governance” plans do not show up in detail in the Public Accounts of Canada, nor is there an acceptable explanation of the value for such spending. Most of the limited costing data partly presented in the Public Accounts rarely becomes the subject of parliamentary committee reviews. This fall sitting of Parliament is going to be full of non-confidence votes, politicking, child's play, and more name-calling. This does not leave room for much belief that there will be adults in the room willing to penetrate how Ottawa insiders work, and make efforts to fix Ottawa's secretive and service-deficient ways that harm many Canadians. Ken Rubin writes on transparency matters, and is reachable via kenrubin.ca. The Hill Times