Anand's misleading plan to combat misinformation

Liberals' access-to-information strategy fails basic fact check

A recent media release from a powerful minister proclaimed the Liberal government’s new “trust and transparency strategy.”

Anita Anand announced a government-wide initiative designed to “foster a culture of openness.” She said the package, a grab-bag of policies promoting access to government information, would help build trust in an age of misinformation and disinformation.

OK, count me in.

As a small contribution to combating mis/disinformation, here’s a fact check on Anand’s release.

CLAIM: In 2020, the Liberal government launched the “first full review” of the Access to Information Act (ATIA) since it was introduced in 1983.

BALONEY: In fact, the Act has had many extensive reviews, including one in 1987 by a committee of Parliament and another in 2002 by a government task force. Compared with these, the 2020 review was tepid, weak and shallow.

CLAIM: The new strategy includes setting clear objectives and measuring progress.

BALONEY: The strategy contains not one objective where progress can be precisely measured. Rather, there’s a website listing whether in-house projects have begun or finished.

Contrast that with an existing objective: at least 90 per cent of institutions should respond to 90 per cent of access-to-information requests within legal timelines. Only about half did so in 2022-23. That’s the kind of hard accounting that’s needed.

CLAIM: The action plan targets “the most pressing and operational challenges” facing the access to information regime.

BALONEY: The plan is silent or equivocal on the urgent challenges: curbing cabinet-secrecy claims; giving the information commissioner genuine order-making power and independence in setting her budget; imposing strict limits on delays; establishing disincentives and even penalties to rein in rogue departments; etc.

You get the idea. The strategy to combat disinformation is, well, rife with disinformation.

Treasury Board, Anand’s department and a branch of cabinet, recently completed a three-year review of the Access to Information Act, which is required by law. When consultations opened in 2021, frequent users of the Act dutifully stepped up with briefing documents. We also gamely participated in online feedback forums.

Soon it became clear the exercise was a sham.

The June 2020 announcement of the review said proposals for legislative changes to the Act would be considered. Only after the exercise ended did the Liberal government acknowledge that legislative changes were never being considered.

A series of online forums organized by Treasury Board to solicit input from the public were conducted at the kindergarten level, run by hosts who knew nothing about access to information. The sessions may have ticked some boxes. The forums certainly ticked off participants.

The Treasury Board report that emerged from the pro-forma exercise was bureaucratic pablum. No hard commitments, just a group-hug of best efforts. And the ATI Modernization Action Plan that Anand released May 29 was an administrator’s wet dream. Teams of bureaucrats would hold information sessions, facilitate dialogue, update courses, write job descriptions, explore technology, and provide guidance. Good god, guidance was everywhere.

There was a new policy on the release of historical records. But it was all just guidance, a kind of gentle nudge from the centre, which access officers could safely ignore. Records revealing federal-provincial negotiations might be released after 30 years – or not, if a department happened to think otherwise. Defence records after 50 years – or not, if the military might be spooked. Notably, these fuzzy timeframes were not about proactive releases. They were mere guidelines about how to stickhandle information requests, and please do feel free to ignore.

Anand’s news release also touted the next legislated review of the Act, scheduled for June 2025. “The next review of the ATIA will give the Government of Canada the opportunity to explore ways to continue strengthening the ATI regime,” she promised.

A curious thing about Anand’s initiative. Ottawa’s “trust and transparency strategy” has left me largely in the dark and with no trust at all.