Michel Drapeau, who quite literally wrote the book on Canada’s access law, said the provision buried in the government’s budget implementation bill is “undemocratic,” “high handed” and marks the first time to his knowledge that a Canadian government has tried to make an exemption to the access laws retroactive.
“I think it’s wrong, it’s very, very wrong,” Drapeau said. “There is a concept in law that laws, normally, that’s 99.999 per cent, never have any retroactive action. The past is the past.”
The precedent the government is setting by making the exemption to the access to information act retroactive could be used to eliminate all trace of other files, Drapeau said.
“There’s no limit – anything they want. I guess they could pass a law on whatever activities that this particular government might have done or may have been involved in. It could be the Libyan mission or the ISIL mission.”
“This information doesn’t belong to this government – it belongs to us people.”
The problem, Drapeau points out, is the purpose of the access to information law is to allow citizens and researchers to search past government documents.
“We shouldn’t go out and purge records because we changed our mind or we don’t believe in what it is. I find that wrong and I find it is like robbing part of our collective and national memory and to what purpose.”
“Effectively what they’ve done is they are censoring that part of the past,” he added.
Drapeau’s comments come after the Conservative government tabled a 167-page budget implementation bill Thursday including several provisions that have nothing to do with the budget Finance Minister Joe Oliver tabled last month.
One provision slipped into the omnibus bill amends the Ending the Long-gun Registry Act to ensure that the Access to Information Act and the Privacy Act do not apply to long-gun registry records the Conservatives want destroyed – records the Quebec government went to court unsuccessfully to keep.
Quebec has vowed to create its own provincial long-gun registry.
Exceptionally, however, the Harper government has backdated the exemption.
“The non-application of the Access to Information Act and the Privacy Act is retroactive to October 25, 2011, the day on which the Ending the Long-gun Registry Act was introduced into Parliament.”
Duff Conacher, co-founder of Democracy Watch, said the provision could be open to a court challenge.
“That could be tested in the courts – it is an act of Parliament – and the thing that the courts would focus on is that it’s retroactive to the day the act was introduced in Parliament – not passed in Parliament – and I think that the courts would find that that is illegal.”
Conacher said it is the first time he has seen an exemption to the access law made retroactive.
“It’s definitely a bad precedent and an example of excessive government secrecy and it’s a very dangerous step backwards.”
Michael Karanicolas, senior legal officer for the Centre for Law and Democracy, said the number of exemptions to Canada’s Access to Information Act, or paramountcy clauses, have been multiplying while other countries have been becoming more transparent.
“Unfortunately what we’re seeing in the Canadian system is the opposite where there is a patchwork of other laws that all override the access to information law,” he said, pointing out that a complete reform of the Access to Information Act is long overdue.
“This is just another example of that.”
Karanicolas said he cannot recall another case of an exemption from the access law being made retroactive.
The multiplication of exemptions to the access law is a problem Information Commissioner Suzanne Legault highlighted in her March report on modernizing the Access to Information Act in which she recommended that Schedule II, which lists exemptions to the act, be repealed.
“The number of provisions listed in Schedule II is growing,” she wrote. “There were 40 provisions in 33 statutes in 1983. This number has now doubled – as of 2015, Schedule II contains 81 provisions listed in 58 statutes.”
Legault’s office refused to comment, however, on the provisions contained in the government’s budget implementation bill, saying only that the commissioner “reserves her comments on proposed legislation for Parliament.”
Liberal ethics critic Scott Simms said he’s not surprised the government is making the exemption retroactive, saying it was clear the Conservatives want to eliminate all trace of the long gun registry.
Treasury Board President Tony Clement, who oversees Canada’s access to information law, was not available to comment and his office could not say why the exemption is being made retroactive.
Original Article
Source: ipolitics.ca/
Author: Elizabeth Thompson
No comments:
Post a Comment