Access-to-Information

By Ken Rubin February 1, 2021 -  If only a non-partisan arms-length vetting committee would be around, Canadians would have had a better Governor General than Julie Payette, so they say. Yet the secrecy around her appointment, the prime minister's role, and the vetting process involved are part of the problem. There is no shining light on the vetting process for this job and starstruck officials from the Prime Minister's Office may have gotten suckered by a former astronaut.

Access to information (ATI) is animated by a simple principle: the public ought to know. Despite governments unfortunately tending towards secrecy and risk-aversion, a free flow of information is absolutely vital for democracy. ATI, then, is an important democratic safeguard, to mitigate the negative predilections of government and ensure a robust state of public discourse. ATI legislation first emerged in Sweden in 1766, but it wasn’t until the postwar era that it began to flourish in a number of other liberal democracies.

By Ken Rubin It's time for the government to take off the mask that disguises and robs us of our public right to know. Trustworthy and revitalized government requires effective access and more public scrutiny. November 9, 2020 - In these pandemic months, no one, not the public or Parliament, is getting greater transparency.

In light of challenges during the pandemic, the Canadian Association of Journalists, the Centre for Free Expression, News Media Canada and the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression are extending the deadline for nominations for the 2020 Code of Silence awards for outstanding achievement in government secrecy to Monday, November 16, 2020.  The awards are given annually in each of four categories -- federal, provincial, municipal, and police services.

The Centre for Free Expression, along with its co-signers BCCLA, CAUT, CCLA, and PEN Canada, have written today to the CEOs of Zoom and YouTube to express deep concern with the companies’ censorship of an academic roundtable at an American university. This action points to the new threat to academic freedom when, because of the coronavirus, most classes and other educational activities of universities and colleges are only possible through platforms such as Zoom and YouTube. 

By Ken Rubin There's no real desire to remedy shortcomings. It is no longer good enough to continue holding Canadians hostage to incomplete data