Hot off the press!

Darce reported in an earlier posting that the Right to Know Coalition of Nova Scotia had lent its name to a petition in an effort to convince the Bulgarian government not to weaken its FOI laws. This was not in vain as reported below by the Access to Information Programme (AIP) Foundation, "established on October 23, 1996 in Sofia, Bulgaria by journalists, lawyers, sociologists, and economists who work in the area of human rights. They joined efforts to promote the right to information and initiate a public debate on related issues."

We congratulate them on their success. Keep up the good fight!

As a result of the initiated active public debate with the involvement of a large number of Bulgarian, foreign and international nongovernmental and governmental organizations, Bulgarian media, journalists, public figures and experts, the advocacy of AIP, and the will of some political parties represented in parliament, the initially proposed amendments were considerably changed in a positive way.

Full Article


Cheers,
Greg Pemberton
RTKNS Web Admin

On CBC online, Tony Burman has started off a new blog called CBC Inside Media. The starting post from him is called 'How do we protect the crucial role of investigative journalism?' Tony is currently 'Editor in Chief of CBC News — which includes news, current affairs and Newsworld. He is CBC's chief journalist, in charge of editorial content on radio, television and the internet'.

I have included a comment Darce posted to Tony's first blog entry on investigative journalism below.

Cheers,

Greg Pemberton

RTKNS Web Admin

Tony, more journalists have to be aware that an important tool for
investigative journalism is freedom of information legisation. Yet during 11 years as the information commissioner for Nova Scotia I noted how few journalists use the Act. This means that governments (all 14 of our
governments have freedom of information legisation)feel little pressure from journalists to live up to their obligations to be as open and accountable as the law requires.

This is one of the reasons I decided,on my retirement, that Nova
Scotia should have a Right to Know Coalition. With the help and encouragement of a dedicated group of volunteers we now have one. Among the things we do is offer journalists training in how best to use freedom of information legislation. We offer assistance as well to individual journalists in making applications for information and, if
necessary, to prepare appeals. Those who use the freedom of information act know how frustrating it can be. But there is a lot of evidence it can also be rewarding.

I recommend all newsrooms put Alasdair Roberts' "BLACKED OUT -
Government Secrecy in the Information Age" within easy reach of all their journalists.

Catch our website: www.nsrighttoknow.ca

Darce Fardy

Posted May 31, 2007 09:17 AM

Protesting the Weakening of FOI Laws in Bulgaria

At the request of International Freedom of Information Advocates Network, a European-based FOI advocacy group of which RTKNS is a member, and at the invitation of Toby Mendel of Article 19, I have attached our Coalition to a protest letter to the Bulgarian Government. The Bulgarian Government plans to amend its Act to require applicants to have a legal interest in the information requested (whatever that means) and to declare that it's all or nothing. If anything in a record is off FOI limits, then it all is; no severing of information .

The protest includes advocacy groups and others from some thirty countries. So far we are the only ones from this side of the pond. The flood of support is incredible.

Darce

Darce Fardy
President
Right to Know Coalition of Nova Scotia
(902) 422-1481
darce@eastlink.ca
http://www.nsrighttoknow.ca/

More on the issue:

21 MAY 2007
International FOI Advocates Protest Draft Amendments that would Weaken Bulgarian Public Information Act(Note that the protest letter is available at this address as well)

No wonder right to know activists get depressed.

In its May 1, 2007 edition the Globe and Mail carried two federal secrecy issues back to back.

In one an RCMP Officer complains that he saw requests to the RCMP for information involving the force's controversial pension plan delayed and obstructed. And this from the man who recently retired as a senior officer in RCMP Access to Information.

The Officer told a House of Commons Committee that the RCMP leadership took nine months to deliver records that could have been made availabe in 60 days. "And the version that was finally shipped out was so heavily editted that few actual words were visible between the vast swaths of blank ink".

The story on the next page is headlined: "Judge, Arar join to uncloak torture report secrecy." According to the writer of the story the public is still not allowed to see the blacked out portion, not even after a $15-million public inquiry that lasted more than three years".

Obstruction like this happens because not enough Canadians seem to care. And citizen pressure is the only thing that will get governments' attention.

2007 Spring Conference of the Municipal Development Officers Association for Nova Scotia (April 18th to 20th, Antigonish)

About 25 people attended the annual meeting, which put a day aside to discuss freedom of information and privacy. David Fraser, a solicitor specializing in privacy and Bob Doherty from Department of Justice spoke in the morning and I spoke in the afternoon.

It was good to see a municipal organization spend an entire day on access to information issues.

I spoke about our coalition and why we believed it necessary to promote openness and accountability. I provided some examples of difficulties people have had getting information from municipalities and how too many of them were ignoring their obligation under Part XX of the Municipal Government Act which contained freedom of information legislation. Part XX and the MGA is similar to the Freedom of Information Act, which applies to government and its agencies, school boards, hospitals and universities.