Reform is long overdue - Chatham Daily News

Reform is long overdue

September 10, 2008

 
 

FOI is such a political acronym that in some circles it has become a word unto its own, pronounced "foy." Yet if it ever gets a place in a dictionary, its description, in Canada at least, should read something like this: "Short form for freedom of information request. But rarely accomplished in short order by any government body, much less at the most senior levels."

The nation's information commissioner recently upheld a newspaper industry complaint that government practices of tagging requests for information as "sensitive" generally lead to "unfair and unjustifiable delays in the processing of those requests," and the commissioner has asked sectors of the federal government to stop holding up such information.

The commissioner's finding caps off a three-year investigation into more than 20 government departments. It was all triggered by a September 2005 complaint by the Canadian Newspaper Association that alleged "secret rules and procedures . . . contravene the (Access to Information) Act, and result, more importantly, in unfair and unjustifiable delays in the processing of media requests for government information to which the public has a right in our democracy."

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