Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee.
Your committee has invited me to give testimony about the state of access to information in Canada. Let me share my experiences with you. This is the 15th review, by the way, and I have given over 15 presentations on this topic out of some 40 or more to Parliament on public interest matters. I've been around the block.
My public interest quest to get access to information records started a decade and a half before the Access to Information Act regime was adopted 40 years ago. All that the access legislation that was adopted did was place more roadblocks in the way for me and others who are intent on exposing how Ottawa really operates.
Since the Access to Information Act's passage, officials have been saying, with a straight face, that the act has always worked pretty well, needing only occasional minor tweaking. Its most consistent need, they say, is for more millions of dollars—for them, of course—but those extra resources received unfortunately go to further propping themselves up while only permitting Canadians to receive severed materials that lessen our freedom to know.
I offer some evidence of how such rigged access mainly serves the vested interests of those wanting Canadians to know very little, if anything.
The first is hiding unmarked children's graves at disgraceful, racist residential schools. Second is covering up bribery and influence, from the CPR scandal to the sponsorship mess to the current SNC-Lavalin debacle. Third is ignoring for far too long Hockey Canada's, the armed forces' and the RCMP's disgraceful conduct of turning away from handling—and even encouraging—sexual assault and injury cases, all done under the eyes of government officials. Fourth is repressing the public knowing about the workings of the bread price-fixing scandal and downplaying the high-pressure sales stakes Canadians face at the big banks as the banks make record-breaking profits. Fifth is keeping Canadians in the dark about policies that give us the highest cellphone prices in the world, and about the behind-the-scenes lobbying that has given Canadians some of the highest drug and food prices in the world. It's hard to get at those things.
Further, it is more than sad and disgusting that our frontline health workers did not get fuller information and less confusing data from authorities during the pandemic. I personally witnessed the suppression of whistle-blower information of the kind Pierre Blais and Shiv Chopra had when they tried to alert the public of health hazards, and I received severed records after delays and complaints about officials actively assisting and funding the lethal asbestos and tobacco industries in Canada and abroad. I've seen highly redacted records—having gotten the consent of Maher Arar and Monia Mazigh—in which authorities' twisted misinformation led to the rendition of Maher Arar to Syrian torturers.
I and others have fought for records that highlight the wasted billions of dollars spent on information technologies that barely work. Just see the partial revelations coming out about the millions poured into the ArriveCAN app while cheap, known alternatives were ignored.
All of this is made possible because of a system of oppressive cabinet confidences; policy, legal and economic advice; commercial confidentiality; and the sleight of hand that buries, for instance, the real costs and beneficiaries of large contracts, like the multi-billion-dollar combat naval ship program.