Mr. Speaker, a few short weeks ago I asked the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development about her office's obstruction of an information request about a $5 million advertising campaign during the Olympics. As I said at the time, the media had a simple question, department officials had the answer and the minister's office intervened and hid the truth. The minister, in her response, stated:
We will be taking a look at this example and taking it into consideration to see how we can improve our processes in the future.
However, what has she done to improve that process? Based on her statements since, it seems that political control of information is even more rigid than we could have imagined. While appearing at the ethics committee this week, the minister stated that her office vetted everything government departments told reporters. So much for open and transparent government.
How far does this extend? If a reporter asks the department a simple question such as where Tim Hortons is, does it have to go to her political staff to get the answer?
The government has many trained communications staff to deal with media requests, whether complex or simple. The ministers in the government need to let them do their job without interference. In fact, the Privy Council Office was before the operations committee yesterday. It told us that it had hired an additional 20 communications experts under the economic action plan.
The minister's entire approach is not in principle with an open and transparent government. It seems as though on access to information requests and requests for information from journalists, the government's first instinct is to release as little information as possible, as late as possible and as incomplete as possible.
The Information Commissioner recently reported that access to information has reached a “red alert” level in some departments and Human Resources and Skills Development Canada received a “C” rating. In addition, the Information Commissioner is undertaking a systemic investigation to examine whether political interference in the processing of access requests is a cause of delay or unduly restricts disclosure under the act.
As we saw even today at the ethics committee, a political employee in the office of the Minister of Natural Resources, for example, could not even recall if he interfered with access to information requests more than once.
His colleague in the office of the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development is set to appear in front of the same committee on Thursday to address the exact issues I raised in my question. I hope he can explain not only to our colleagues on the committee but to all Canadians why they should not have been told that the government was spending nearly $5 million on self-promotion around the time of the Olympics.
Since the minister seems to embrace the notion that all requests need to be vetted before information is given to journalists, I am not terribly confident there will be an admission that political interference is a problem that needs to be addressed.
Again, what new measures will the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development and the Prime Minister implement to ensure information is given to the media, that access to information is given to all Canadians, members of Parliament and everyone? So far we have only heard the minister's endorsement of political interference.