Partisans may not believe it, but Canada’s “culture of secrecy” existed long before Stephen Harper moved into the prime minister’s office. And it’ll be around long after he moves out, unless Canadians do more than just cast their ballots in the next election.

That’s why four groups concerned about freedom of information, one of which I’m part of, are launching a campaign encouraging Canadians to take a small but vital step on social media that would raise more awareness of just how much is being hidden from us: spotlighting examples of government secrecy with the hashtag #cdnfoi.

Such secrecy has its roots in our political system, which has a tradition of strict party discipline. Because of that discipline, decisions made by the government behind closed doors – in cabinet meetings, for example – are rarely defeated in the House of Commons, making secret forums the principle arbiters of public policy.

To be sure, the Harper administration has done more than its share to cultivate a backroom state, frustrating access to government records and officials, as well as failing to fix our broken freedom of information system. But Canadian society is an especially fertile ground for the growth of policies that violate our right to know.

In part, that’s because our country doesn’t have any groups that exclusively and routinely advocate for greater freedom of information at a national level. Probably the closest we have to that is the small BC Freedom of Information and Privacy Association.

But, as its name implies, the association’s two staff members toil on information and privacy issues in British Columbia and the rest of Canada from a tiny office above a beauty salon and spa in Vancouver.

Meanwhile, other organizations that care about our right to know have even more multiplicitous mandates. For example, Ottawa’s DemocracyWatch stands on guard for democratic reform and corporate responsibility, as well as freedom of information. Meanwhile, Halifax’s Centre for Law and Democracy also deals with other human rights issues abroad.

By comparison, the United States has three umbrella organizations that exclusively safeguard Americans’ right to know.

They include: OpenTheGovernment.org, representing 94 groups; the National Freedom of Information Coalition, representing 30 dues-paying groups; and the Sunshine in Government Initiative, representing nine groups.

Such umbrella organizations have always been few and far between in Canada.

In the seventies, a coalition called ACCESS: a Canadian Committee for the Right to Public Information was established to lobby for greater freedom of information.

Reports from the Globe and Mail back then described the committee as having the backing of groups such as the Canadian Manufacturers’ Association, the Canadian Labour Congress and the Canadian Daily Newspapers Association.

But long-time right to know researcher Ken Rubin stated in an email that ACCESS, which played a key role in the creation of Canada’s current freedom of information law, was actually “primarily a group of diverse individuals” that included academics, activists and lawyers and had some “paper” affiliations with other organizations.

Despite that key role, by the eighties the committee had folded. According to Rubin, during the same decade, a “loose coalition” came together under the auspices of the Canadian Federation of Civil Liberties and Human Rights Associations to “monitor and improve” freedom of information. That coalition also “went by the wayside” once the federation “faded away.”

Then, in January 2000, investigative reporter Robert Cribb announced the formation of Open Government Canada – a “national forum for FOI networking, education and advocacy pushing for legislative changes that grant greater access to public information.“

More than 25 groups were represented at its founding conference in March of that year. However, in an email, Cribb stated the coalition “died a regretful death.”

The reason: “It proved to be impossible to lure financial support for such an endeavour – part of the perplexing lack of concern, engagement or righteous indignation in Canada around issues such as freedom of information and the public's right to know.”

Those concerns aside, in 2011, DemocracyWatch launched the Open Government Coalition. So far, the coalition is made up of three groups – not counting DemocracyWatch and an affiliated charity. Although founder Duff Conacher stated in an email he plans to expand it this fall.

In the meantime, the New Democrats and the Liberals have proposed laws and policies that would open up government. They should be applauded for doing so. And, if the past is a predictor of the future, they may even act on some of those proposals if they win power – just as the Conservatives did.

But eventually the expediency of secrecy seems to seduce every government, regardless of its political stripe. Which means a New Democrat or Liberal administration will likely become just as tight with information as the Conservatives – albeit, perhaps, with more of a velvet glove covering that clenched, iron fist.

Don’t believe me? Well, look no further than the United States where Democrat president Barack Obama swept into office promising an “unprecedented level of openness in Government.”

Five years later, an Associated Press analysis found that in 2013 his administration “more often than ever censored government files or outright denied access to them last year under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act.”

More recently, the agency also listed “eight ways the Obama administration is blocking information.”

Meanwhile, for his part New York Times reporter James Risen has called Obama “the greatest enemy of press freedom in a generation.”

Just as neither the right nor the left has a monopoly on the truth, neither has a monopoly on secrecy.

As a result, it’s vital for Canadians to start paying better attention to our information rights so we can better safeguard them.

That’s why the BC Freedom of Information and Privacy Association, the Canadian Association of Journalists, DeSmog Canada and IntegrityBC, are now encouraging Canadians to tweet about threats to their right to know using the hashtag #cdnfoi.

Those threats include everything from backroom government meetings and frustrated freedom of information requests to inaccessible officials and nonexistent public records, whether they are at the federal, provincial or local level.

At present, the use of that hashtag isn’t widespread, making it more difficult for Canadians to know about such threats.

So, by just tagging stories about government secrecy with #cdnfoi, you can help your fellow citizens know about what they aren’t being allowed to know.

And you can encourage others to take up the fight by sharing these graphics promoting #cdnfoi – helping change Canada’s culture of secrecy in the process.

Image Credit: Will Brown

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Suzanne Legault, Canada’s Information Commissioner, says federal officials are suppressing freedom of information in Canada.

“I am seeing signs of a system in crisis, where departments are unable to fulfill even their most basic obligations under the act,” she told a group of bureaucrats yesterday in a private meeting.

A copy of the watchdog’s speaking notes was obtained by The Canadian Press.

According to Legault new protocols and directives are thwarting the public’s access to information. She cited a Treasury Board directive, released in April of this year that instructs bureaucrats to exclude ministers’ offices from access-to-information document searches.

Some protection is afforded to information contained in a minister’s office due to a Supreme Court of Canada ruling in May of 2011, but this new directive oversteps the measures of that ruling.

“This new component is not found in the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision,” her speaking notes read. “In my view, it is potentially damaging to requesters’ rights.”

The directive in question also gives senior political staffers decision-making power over which documents are relevant to access-to-information requests, leaving ostensibly non-partisan decisions up to political actors.

Other points of concern for Leagult were unfulfilled requests, where information was unjustifiably refused or excluded from the Access to Information Act.

In addition, such unjustified delays were irresponsibly handled by departments.

Legault took the Department of National Defense to federal court for a 1,110-day extension under the Act, only to have the department release the documents a few weeks before her challenge in court.

“This type of case is not rare,” she said.

According to her notes, complaints to the Information Officer’s office in the first 5 months of the 2013-2014 year is up by 35 per cent. Complaints about departments claiming ‘no record exists’ in response to a request are also up by 34 per cent.

This week marks the annual Right to Know Week which promotes transparency in government.

Commissioner Legault also launched a formal investigation into the Harper Government’s systematic efforts to silence scientists and censor their engagement with the media. That investigation, launched after the release of a 128-page report by the University of Victoria’s Environmental Law Centre and Democracy Watch, is currently ongoing.

Legault has previously admitted this government is “not the most transparent,” and is a laggard in the Access to Information area. In 2011 less than 20 per cent of requests were fully disclosed. In early 2013, Legault claimed the government's transparency was at an all time low and requests for extension were at an all time high.

Poor access-to-information regimes "prevents Canadians from holding governments to account," she told the CBC back in February.

"Canadians should be angry," she said at the time. "It's really a fundamental democratic right in Canada [and] it's linked to freedom of expression."

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The State Department's decision to hand over control to the oil industry to evaluate its own environmental performance on the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline has led to a colossal oversight.

Neither Secretary of State John Kerry nor President Barack Obama could tell you the exact route that the pipeline would travel through countless neighborhoods, farms, waterways and scenic areas between Alberta's tar sands and oil refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast.

A letter from the State Department denying an information request to a California man confirms that the exact route of the Keystone XL export pipeline remains a mystery, as DeSmog recently revealed.

Generic maps exist on both the State Department and TransCanada websites, but maps with precise GIS data remain the proprietary information of TransCanada and its chosen oil industry contractors. 

Thomas Bachand, a San Francisco-based photographer, author, and web developer discovered this the hard way. A year and a half after he first filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking the GIS data for his Keystone Mapping Project, Mr. Bachand received a troubling response from the State Department denying his request.

In the letter, the State Department admits that it doesn't have any idea about the exact pipeline route – and that it never asked for the basic mapping data to evaluate the potential impacts of the pipeline. 

Where will KXL intersect rivers or cross ponds that provide drinking water? What prized hunting grounds and fishing holes might be ruined by a spill? How can communities prepare for possible incidents? 

The U.S. State Department seems confident in letting the tar sands industry – led in this instance by TransCanada, whose notorious track record with Keystone 1 includes more than a dozen spills in its first year of operation – place its pipeline wherever it wishes.

"[State] does not have copies of records responsive to your request because the Environmental Impact Statement for the Keystone pipeline project was created by Cardno ENTRIX under a contract financed by TransCanada Keystone Pipeline LP, and not the U.S. government," reads the State Department's letter denying Bachand's information request.

"Neither Cardno ENTRIX nor TransCanada ever submitted GIS information to the Department of State, nor was either corporation required to do so. The information that you request, if it exists, is therefore neither physically nor constructively under the control of the Department of State and we are therefore unable to comply with your FOIA request."

As Mr. Bachand pointed out in a July 3 blog post: "Without this digital mapping information, the Keystone XL’s Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) and Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) are incomplete and cannot be evaluated for environmental impacts."

When Mr. Bachand asked TransCanada for GIS data, the company said it couldn't supply it due to "national security" concerns.

Mr. Bachand's failed attempt to obtain basic information on the pipeline route exemplifies the recurring problems with the Obama State Department's botched review of the environmental and climate impacts of the Keystone XL pipeline: huge information gaps, conflicts of interest, industry lobbying muscle and bureaucratic bungling of the process.

As it turns out, TransCanada and its contractors have complete control over critical aspects of the review process, calling into question what else we don't know thanks to the Obama administration's poor handling of the most controversial pipeline decision in recent history. 

API Dues-Paying Member Did Latest SEIS

The State Department handed over responsibility for preparing the Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) to an American Petroleum Institute (API) dues-paying member, Environmental Resources Management, Inc. (ERM Group) – a firm with historic ties to Big Tobacco, as well as two other Big Oil-tied contractors.

State originally redacted the biography of one of the co-authors of the environmental study, Andrew Bielakowski, who had worked on three previous TransCanada-sponsored studies for ERM Group. Adding to the scandal, ERM has a history of rubber-stamping ecologically hazardous pipelines, including two high-profile projects in the Caspian Sea and in Peru. 

Since TransCanada's June 2008 Keystone XL proposal, API has spent over $22 million lobbying at the federal level for the pipeline and tar sands expansion. Furthermore, two of API's lobbyists tasked to do KXL influence peddling also have close ties to the Obama Administration.

Marty Durbin, the nephew of U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), formerly lobbied for API on behalf of Keystone XL. Durbin was President Obama's former U.S. Senate colleague from Illinois before Obama won the presidency in 2008.

API also hired Ogilvy Government Relations to lobby for Keystone XL in 2012, and one of Ogilvy's key hired guns lobbying on behalf of API on KXL is Moses Mercado. In addition to serving as a key aide to Obama's 2008 presidential campaign and as a super delegate representing Texas for the 2008 Democratic National Convention, Mercado also served as campaign director in New Mexico for Secretary of State John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign.

Unresolved Questions Plague State Department Review

Thomas Bachand asked all the right questions in his blog post reacting to the denial of his FOIA requesting the GIS route data. 

"Did the DOS, TransCanada, and Cardno ENTRIX all fail to perform due diligence in this case only – or is this standard operating procedure?," he asked. "Why hasn’t TransCanada supplied, Cardno ENTRIX seen fit to include, or the DOS requested, electronic data of such national importance? How does the DOS evaluate such national security, economic, and environmental interests without the electronic data?"

These are important questions that Secretary Kerry, and ultimately President Obama, must answer. The fact that neither man has any clue where TransCanada intends to place the Keystone XL pipeline is a troubling revelation that demands immediate and thorough scrutiny.

Without this basic information on where the pipeline would be located, how can the State Department and the White House form an educated analysis of the potential impacts of a tar sands dilbit spill in a neighborhood like Mayflower, Arkansas?

How many schools, backyards, drinking water sources and treasured fishing and hunting spots might be in danger of being ruined by a spill? The answer is, nobody knows, except the oil industry. 

Imagine that concerned citizens in northern states hadn't raised their voices to question TransCanada's intention to run the pipeline across the heart of the Ogallala Aquifer, their drinking water supply and the spigot for huge swaths of American agriculture. What else wouldn't we learn about the potentially devastating impacts of the Keystone XL pipeline?

Keystone XL is not only a dangerous gamble with our health and climate, it is also turning out to be a great example of the oil industry's iron grip on our democracy.

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