Tories kill information registry:
The federal Conservatives have quietly killed a giant information registry that was used by lawyers, academics, journalists and ordinary citizens to hold government accountable. The registry, created in 1989, is an electronic list of every request filed to all federal departments and agencies under the Access to Information Act. Known as CAIRS, for Co-ordination of Access to Information Requests System, the database allowed ordinary citizens to identify millions of pages of once-secret documents that became public through individual freedom-of-information requests over many years.A spokesman for Treasury Board confirmed Friday that the system is being killed because “extensive” consultations showed it was not valued by government departments.
Government departments actually hate this because it exposes potentially embarrassing information - what a shocker!
More on how this shows the continuation of the Conservatives attempts to restrict and stifle information:
“This is terrible and I consider this to be yet one more step in making records less accessible,” said Michel Drapeau, a lawyer, frequent user and co-author of a standard reference work on access law. “To do this now after the CAIRS’ usefulness has been proven over and over again is indicative of the extent to which government will go to stifle the access regime.”
How ANY Conservative supporter can now claim that this government is open and accountable and accessible and transparent without cracking a smile or a blush is beyond me. I would love to hear even the Cons Kool-Aid drinkers justify or defend this.
This government’s promises on accountability and transparency and openness has been shown to be a sham.
UPDATE@7:53pm: Other Progressive Bloggers share their outrage at this most recent blatant attempt by the Conservatives to stifle openness, transparency and accountability.
That’s outrageous!!!!
The Liberal’s outta bring this terrible, undemocratic, scandal proned government!!!
Yawn…….