Post 168--Court Rules Against Government Censorship

A report from ARPA--Association for Reformed Political Action:

This afternoon we received news that the Ontario Superior Court has sided with us in ruling that Ontario’s law censoring abortion statistics infringes on freedom of expression as outlined in Section 2 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

We know that censorship is the new weapon of choice for those intent on preventing Canadians from knowing the truth about abortion. This decision is a huge victory for us and ensures that we can more effectively work to advance protections for pre-born children!

ARPA Canada, the parent organization of We Need a Law has put a lot of resources into this case. In fact, it was one of the reasons we went on the STOP CENSORSHIP tour earlier this year.

A quick recap:
In January 2012, the Government of Ontario amended the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA) by adding Section 65 (5.7) which reads: “This Act does not apply to records relating to the provision of abortion services.” In 2015, together with Pat Maloney, a pro-life blogger from Ottawa, the Association for Reformed Political Action (ARPA) Canada filed a notice of application asking the Ontario Superior Court to strike down this censorship provision.

The case was heard on February 1, 2017 where the applicants asked Mr. Justice Marc Labrosse to rule that Section 65(5.7) of the FIPPA was unconstitutional because it censored the residents of Ontario, indeed all Canadians, from having access to meaningful abortion related information.

From ARPA’s press release earlier today:
ARPA is very pleased that Justice Labrosse came to this conclusion. “This is a huge victory for freedom of expression,” said André Schutten, ARPA Canada’s director of law and policy. “It’s historic. There has never been a decision granting access to information from the executive branch based on the freedom of expression provision of the Charter. All disclosure orders to date have been made on a statutory rather than constitutional basis. Abortion is a matter of public importance and the courts have long recognized this. Abortion is also a recognized political issue, and political expression is at the core of protected speech under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.”

“This decision strengthens democracy,” continued Schutten. “The question at the heart of this case was whether governments can avoid accountability on a particular matter simply by excluding information related to that matter from the access to information law. We are very pleased that the court has struck this censorship provision down.”

The hard work of ARPA lawyers John Sikkema, André Schutten as well as outside counsel Albertos Polizogopoulos is to be commended! We also express deep appreciation for the perseverance and dedication of Ms. Maloney. Thanks Pat!

We are not sure how the Government of Ontario will respond to this decision. The court has given them a year to allow for the adoption of remedial legislation. Suffice to say, this case was about transparency and democracy. In our view, the actions of a democratic government and the money it spends should be open to scrutiny by the taxpayer and voter.

But more importantly, this case is about justice. It is a scientific fact that each abortion takes the life of a human being. Even if many wish to condone or even celebrate this, nobody can deny that a human life has been taken. The way to deal with this is not to censor all abortion-related information. Rather it is to allow the truth to be known, and then to engage in meaningful public discourse about how to address the over 100,000 abortions that occur in Canada every there. There must be documentation, recognition and, hopefully one day, public acknowledgement of the injustice of abortion and regulations put in place to limit it.

We hope you will join us in remaining diligent in ensuring that the state cannot simply hide information they feel is not in their political interest to discuss.

Post 111—Liberal FG and Transparency

Canada underwent an election in the 2015 fall. That first sentence contains a pun, something I, along with newspaper editors, always enjoy. It was fall, that is, autumn time, but it was also the fall of the Harper Conservative government, a double fall situation. The victorious Liberals promised this was going to be a change from dark opaque government to transparency and disclosure.

The Harper Record

First of all, was the Harper government all that disastrous?  Den Tandt, whose writings I increasingly appreciate along with those of Andrew Coyne as I proceed with this blog, acknowledges that it is fashionable “to belittle and insult the outgoing PM. What good he did is forgotten amid the rush to assign blame for the loss.”  At the same time, he strongly argues that Harper’s was a government marked by “responsible fiscal management” that handed over balanced books and a growing economy.  Harper may have had his nasty dictatorial and centralizing side—and I fully agree with that—but Den Tandt’s list of five positive points for the defeated Conservative government was not balanced by a charge of lack of fiscal transparency, something he would surely have included in his article of November 2, 2015. Nasty personality? Yes, that was Harper’s downfall. But fiscal opaqueness? Lack of fiscal transparency? None of that surfaced—except of course from the victorious Liberal side. But that’s to be expected in the Canadian political culture of nastiness, blackball and blame; it has nothing to do with truth or fact.

The Transparency Tumble

      Den Tandt

Half a year after the above Den Tandt article, he wrote a column with the title “Liberals hiding budget plans.” Now that does not sound like transparency to me. So, let’s see how he unpacks this charge. There is this institution called Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) that apparently keeps an eye on the Federal budget. According to Den Tandt, this office had been given data by the Finance Department “that would have allowed for a five-year breakdown of the government’s taxing and spending plans.” However, Finance prevented PBO from releasing this data because it allegedly is “confidential.”  The problem here is that it was not deemed confidential under the Harper or even the Liberal Paul Martin regime. Den Tandt lashes out:

The fair questions, then, which only a cretin (Boer: from a Webster-- stupid, vulgar, mentally retarded) would not think to ask: Why is this information confidential now, when it was not before?  And how can this Liberal party, whose leader lashed himself to the mast of transparency long before he became PM, justify a move that appears to limit the PBO’s power to publicly dissect government projections, and thus, this independent office of parliament’s freedom of action?

The article contains more of the same. There is the talk of openness, but not the walk. There is the claim of transparency, but it is not an honest claim. Den Tandt did not expect a reasonable answer from the PM himself, for, he charges, “The PM himself responds to fair questions with the most outrageous nonsense” (VS, April 8, 2016).

      Coyne

Coyne chimed in on a similar strong, not so pleasant, note.  “The face on TV may bespeak a commitment to idealism and honesty, transparency and fairness, but the government behind it has already amassed a record od cynicism, deception, secrecy and cronyism that for most governments would take years.”  He hands us a long list of things promised on which they have reneged. I won’t go into the gory details, but, as I noted above, nothing pretty about it. Words and phrases used in his article include “political chicanery,” “carelessness,” “recklessness.” “the scent of money and expediency” that surround this government. He concludes his piece with this statement, “The Liberals are building up a deficit of trust and ethics to match the fiscal deficit. It has been just six months since they were elected” (VS, April 21, 2016).

Den Tandt and Coyne are two writers for whom I have the highest regard. They don’t play politics; they are straight shooters, the kind I go for.  All I can say is,  “Phew! Wow! Was there something substantial after all about the Conservative election claim that Trudeau was “not ready” for the PM office?” 

Aboriginal Transparency  

But to take it one step further, there’s the case with Canada’s Aboriginals. Everything one reads about them leaves the impression they wallow in poverty. That is a terrible shame, especially since the Feds pump so much money into them year after year without any apparent success in raising them up out of the poverty level. I have written earlier posts to which I refer you in which I discuss how the Harper government began insisting on disclosure on the part of the chiefs who were/are the beneficiaries of that government largess.  The reports I have read indicate that this was a good move supported by most Aboriginals, especially the commoners among them. During an RV trip to Canada’s far north some years ago, we stopped in various Aboriginal communities and spoke with some of their inhabitants. We were surprised how open they were with respect to the corruption, especially amongst their own chiefs. I could not believe how they freely volunteered such info to an unknown white couple. Things were obviously bad.

But now comes the clincher: The Trudeau government is intending to unwind that disclosure standard! Now that leaves me totally floored. Disclosure is part of the gold standard of modern progressive nations. Joe Oliver, the former Conservative Minister of Finance, writes, "The Transparency Act was designed to protect Aboriginal people" (VS, May 3, 2016). On what basis would one lower a demand for disclosure when, as has been revealed abundantly, that many Aboriginal chiefs receive millions while their people live in absolute misery. The documentation is there all over the place for people to see.

I am simply dumbfounded! 

I need to change to another subject, for I don’t want to be seen as a negative politician who loves to berate the current government.  I surely don’t. I am basically a positive citizen who appreciates good government, but what we’re facing now seems to be something else!

Post 109—Transparency Revisited

Happy and Unhappy

Transparency is once again an “in” topic.  On the one hand that makes me happy, for it seems governments and their agencies at all levels constantly need to be pushed towards transparency.  So I’m happy that people keep pushing it. On the other hand, it makes me unhappy, for why should governments and their agencies need constant pushing?  Why don’t they just be up front with how they spend the people’s money without being pushed, without needing laws to force them—and then still try to squeak by with all kinds of tricks, legal or otherwise? This makes me not only unhappy, but actually raving mad, angry, and every synonym along this line you can think of. Any official elected or appointed who resists transparency in my book does not deserve to continue in his/her post, let alone be re-elected or re-appointed. It should be the natural thing to do and done automatically without discussion. 

The Vancouver Situation

The latest local development took place in Vancouver’s City Hall last week. Opposition Councilor George Affleck put a motion to the Council asking that the Mayor disclose all of his expenses, including so-called discretionary funds, on a quarterly basis.  He wants the same for the councilors.

It’s a simple matter of yes or no, Affleck argues. Are you going to disclose or not? Why not? he asks. “Be transparent about it. If you think it’s what you need to operate your office, then what’s there to hide? Just let us know and justify it to us.”  Indeed, seems simple doesn’t it?  It should be, of course. On what basis can anyone refuse and still be trusted?  It should not take a motion  or a freedom of information request. It should be out there for anyone to access without any hindrances put in the way.  Alas.

It’s not that the Vancouver City Council does not practice any disclosure.  Most expenses by the councillors are disclosed quarterly, but not those of the Mayor’s office. Nevertheless, however the information was gained, the article discloses some of the Mayor’s spending. Mike Magee, the Mayor’s outgoing chief of staff, indicated that he had approved some of these expenditures and that “they all meet auditing scrutiny.”  I am more than happy to recognize that things are on the up and up. But still, why this hesitancy concerning full, regular and automatic disclosure?  It only arouses suspicion on the part of the tax payer—and the electorate is sure to remember at the crucial time.  (See Matt Robinson, “Councillor pushing mayor to disclose all office expenses,” Vancouver Sun [VS] of April 29, 2016.) 

Fortunately, it turns out that the Mayor is backing Affleck’s motion. He claims pretty well every expenditure is already reported and publicly available. Affleck’s motion will bring “an added layer of transparency to City Hall,” he said.  In spite of this mayoral explanation, “It took a protracted effort by a local journalist to obtain those records under Freedom of Information rules.”  (Anonymous Brief in VS, April 30, 2016, p. A10). I would expect that with this kind of mayoral support, such information will from now on be readily available to anyone. That would be an unusual situation. Maybe the Vancouver City Council will one of these days be featured in Guinness’ Book of World Records? In view of the Mayor’s almost childish eagerness to have Vancouver recognized as a “world-class” city and his strenuous efforts in that direction, one could argue he deserves it.

Now the above issue is mostly, it seems, one of principle. Disclosure is just the right thing to do. There is no indication of massive corruption in Vancouver. I for one, deeply appreciate that. Although I do wonder sometimes about corruption in the relationship between the City Council and Councilors on the one hand and developers on the other hand, but that's another, though related, issue.

The Quebec Situation

But there are other and larger issues of disclosure in other structures in the country where it is more serious, where it is not merely a matter of principle but of resistance to disclosure because of massive fraud. Of course, this has long been a serious problem in the province of Quebec, but I have not followed that very closely. It’s so far removed geographically from where I live here on the West Coast, even though I know that indirectly that affects me also by way of Federal transfers to the provinces of huge sums of money. But in spite of Quebec’s massive fraud, the average citizen there still lives a fairly comfortable life. Brian Lee Crowley, author of the Canadian game changing book Fearful Symmetry, asserts that “If Canada were removed from the equation, in 1953 Quebec’s income per person would have made it the second-richest society in the world after the United States” (p. 69)!  Now who would have ever thought that of our poor abused and mistreated Quebec. 

I suggested above that people will remember such issues at election time. But now I ask, “Will they really?  Michael Den Tandt is much more on top of these things than I am. Speaking of federal budgets, he writes bluntly, “Nobody cares.” He writes that “the most notable about…critical post-mortems of the Trudeau…first budget” is precisely that: “No one cares” (“Liberals hiding budget plans,” VS, April 8, 2016). 

Let’s sleep on that one and take it up from here in Post 110.