Press Release - OTTAWA, May 14 /CNW/ - Prime Minister Stephen Harper's
office leads the
list of nominees for this year's Code of Silence Award, to be handed out
by
the Canadian Association of Journalists later this month.
According to several journalists, the Prime Minister's Office has muzzled
cabinet ministers and civil servants, particularly professional scientists.
It
has forced Tory MPs to vet their comments to reporters through PMO. It
has
cherry-picked questions from friendly journalists and blackballed reporters
who dared to ask questions out of turn. It has stalled and denied freedom
of
information requests and, most recently, the PMO suspended a key access
to
information database.
"Killing the registry was the last straw for many reporters," said CAJ
President Mary Agnes Welch. "There's a broad and deliberate attempt on
the
part of the Harper and his staff to limit the Canadians' right to know
by
ducking reporters' questions, hoarding documents that ought to be public
and
choreographing nearly every word uttered by civil servants and cabinet
ministers."
The CAJ's Code of Silence Award honours the most secretive government
or
department in Canada. The award will be handed out at the CAJ's annual
conference, May 23-25 in Edmonton. Last year, the winner was the Department
of
Foreign Affairs for denying the existence of documents related to the
treatment of Afghan detainees that were requested under federal Access
to
Information legislation.
This year, the nominees are many:
The BC government's climate change secretariat for refusing to reveal
the credentials of the secretariat's
head or the contents of
stakeholder presentations and
for holding closed-door meetings and
symposiums. The secretariat
has also stymied the release of its
staffing and funding levels
and quietly altered the province's
freedom of information legislation
to keep everything it discusses
under an official cone of silence.
The city of Rossland, BC. for forcing a city councillor to resort to
freedom of information requests
to get documents that should be
public and holding closed-door
meetings on issues of public
importance.
The Ontario government for the secretive tendering process involved
in building nuclear power plants
worth $26 billion. The request for
proposals prohibits bidders
from speaking to the media, and the site
selection process squeezes out
public input.
Ontario's Ministry of Children and Youth Services for their two-year
delay in releasing daycare records
following a freedom of information
request by the Toronto Star.
The records revealed serious problems at
several hundred of the 4,400
licensed daycares in the province. A day
after the findings were published,
the ministry vowed to make the
records public and have since
published them on a provincial website.
Transport Canada for proposed draconian secrecy provisions in
amendments to the Aeronautics
Act which, if implemented, will see a
veil of secrecy fall over all
information reported by airlines about
performance, safety violations,
aviation safety problems and their
resolution. None of this information
will be available through the
Access to Information Act even
as de-personalized data.
The town of Montague, PEI for using loopholes in the provincial
Municipalities Act to hold pre-council
meetings in the guise of
committee of the whole sessions.
No formal agenda is created, no
minutes are kept, no report
is presented to open council and
reporters are not allowed to
report on discussions that take place
during the meetings, which are
held a week before the monthly public
meeting. When The Eastern Graphic attempted to
cover a pre-council
meeting, the town's solicitor
threatened to seek a court injunction
to stop the paper from printing
details.
The Canadian Association of Journalists is a professional
organization
with more than 1,500 members across Canada. The CAJ's primary role is to
provide public-interest advocacy and quality professional development for
its
members.
