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Uncovering Government Secrets
Here are some examples of formerly hidden government data
or of government data still being kept secret.
- Still Secret? Why? The Case of Exempting Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Talking Points
The talking points for Canadian Prime Minister Harper's congratulatory November, 2008 call to US President-elect Obama were exempt. The Privy Council Office (PCO) in response to my access request for PM Harper's initial contact with the new President denied access to this part of the record for reasons of “national security” (section 15 (1). PCO also denied access to Obama's biographical information except for headings like “the college years”! The blanked out record in question can be seen here. In a separate request, PCO took nearly five years to send me a largely exempt list of PM briefing notes from 2006!
- Canada's Food Guide: A Classic Case of Going Behind the Official Document
Sometimes, time and effort are needed to go beyond what an official public document portrays. I asked for Health Canada data on how the last two Canadian Food Guides were developed and tested and who influenced the outcome. It was a real shocker to find out how this icon publication that millions use as their best nutritional advice, was put together.
Documents obtained from Health Canada showed various powerful food industry groups – the meat, diary, and egg industries for example, lobbied for more servings of their commodities in Canada's healthy eating guide. The media, including the Ottawa Citizen, then covered such revelations. I also wrote about the behind-the-scene pressure that the food industry exerted in the Hill Times.
- Knowledge About and Use of Access Records: The Deadly Listeria Case and Lax Regulation
As a consumer advocate, for over three decades I have sought access to meat inspection records to see if the meat eaten by Canadians is safe. The fight to even get meat inspection reports the government had done on the larger meat packers' plants began in the nineteen- eighties. It took a few year's effort on my part and that of a Kitchener-Waterloo reporter to win access to those reports. This meant going all the way to the Federal Court of Appeal.
Documents obtained revealed that Agriculture Canada afterwards, with pressure from the meat industry started changing both the rating levels and forms used for meat inspection. The end result was less information and reports designed to give a more favourable impression of the safety of meat packaging plants.
Once the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) took over such inspections in the nineteen-nineties, the meat industry tried even harder to change the very nature of the inspection system so that the companies did most of the “policing” and less government inspectors were on the job. Access documents from 2006 (provided here) that I obtained in 2007 from CFIA showed that the meat industry lobbied successfully to end meat inspection reports.
Those same documents also revealed that CFIA lobbied their counterpart, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), to try and end USDA doing daily inspection visits to meat packaging plants to more thoroughly check and test for signs of listeria.
When 22 listeria related deaths happened in Canada in 2008, and were traced to meat products from a Maple Leaf meat packaging plant in Toronto, the past CFIA-meat industry double-dealing revealed in the 2006 documents was written about in a Globe and Mail front-page story. It is unlikely that the more embarrassing parts of the 2006 records received in 2007 would have been released at the height of the listeria crisis in 2008.
Monitoring over the years what was happening to meat inspection and reporting was crucial to exposing lax safety practices. My experience helped as I knew to look for records of the meat industry meeting with senior government officials to trace what was occurring in emasculating meat inspection and reporting.
- The Long-Hard Struggle to Get An Airline Safety Report
I applied to Transport Canada for the safety review conducted into the operations of the charter airline, Nationair, right after a July 11, 1991 fatal crash of its DC 8 plane in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia. There, all 263 people, crew and passengers, perished.
The August, 1991 post-accident safety review report was denied to me under the law enforcement exemption allegedly because getting the data might prevent airline companies from cooperating in future investigations. The government secrecy stance was then upheld in 1993 by the Information Commissioner of Canada.
The Saudi Arabia government did release their version of what happened to the plane carrying the Nigeria Muslim pilgrims on their way back by charter aircraft from Mecca. But the Canadian government adamantly refused to release its assessment of Nationair's safety capacity.
I went to the Federal Court Trial Division but in 1995 only won a very limited release of portions of the Nationair report. I appealed that decision at the Federal Court of Appeal and was successful at gaining the full report in late 1997.
The report of the Canadian investigation revealed none-too-favourable serious safety conditions and deficiencies at Nationair before the fatal 1991 crash, including poor aircraft maintenance. It indicated that had proper corrective regulatory action been taken, such a disaster could well have been prevented.
The content of the report was reported in the media in early 1998, including in a Globe and Mail article. I also provided the report to the next of kin of the Canadian crew who died in the 2001 crash.
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Secrecy is us and what we can do about it.
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Here are further examples of secrecy practices. Some of these cases are well known like the sponsorship scandal and the Maher Arar detention.
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