Breakenridge: Government secrecy taking hold in Alberta
It was a fairly simple matter, really: between September and December of 2023, more than 94,000 Albertans took part in the government's pension plan engagement survey. What were the results of that survey?
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It's not as though the results were lost or destroyed. The Alberta government had those results and had been sitting on them all along. The thoughts of Albertans on a matter of public importance hardly constitute some sort of state secret, either.
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It took almost two years of digging and prodding, but we finally have the answer. Regardless of one's views on the pension plan debate, it's troubling that we'd see such secrecy around something so straightforward.
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Unfortunately, this is becoming the norm under this government. Hopefully, such a blatant and clunky attempt at secrecy will be a wake-up call when it comes to the erosion of access to information rights in Alberta.
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The first request for responses from the pension survey was sent off to the government by Postmedia in September 2023. Subsequent requests were filed in the ensuing months, but those produced either completely redacted records or no records at all. Late last year, Alberta's Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner (OIPC) began a review into how the government responded to those requests.
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Last week, the government finally relented and provided Postmedia reporter Matthew Black with the results of the pension plan engagement survey. For the record, the survey showed 63 per cent opposition to leaving the Canada Pension Plan, with only 10 per cent expressing support for the idea of a new, separate Alberta Pension Plan.
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It's hard to imagine if those results were flipped that the Alberta government would have engaged in a 21-month campaign to keep them hidden from view. But the potential embarrassment stemming from a public rejection of a government narrative is a pretty flimsy basis for such a lack of transparency.
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This is why access to information is so important and why strong laws are needed to protect that transparency. The problem with that, however, is that access to information laws are crafted and shaped by the same governments that might have a vested interest in limiting access to information.
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Last December, the government passed new legislation overhauling privacy and access to information legislation. Among other things, the bill ushers in new exemptions for all sorts of documents and correspondence, putting them out of reach of access to information requests.
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REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account. Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments. Enjoy additional articles per month. Get email updates from your favourite authors. THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK. Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments Enjoy additional articles per month Get email updates from your favourite authors Your weekday lunchtime roundup of curated links, news highlights, analysis and features. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. Please try again Thank you for the question, that's a good one. 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No country in the western world has concentrated as many employees in the national capital region as has Canada. There's no shortage of people in Ottawa trying to think big thoughts. I think if there's a problem it's at the service delivery. It's people trying to call Revenue Canada to get answers about income tax, and it's having issues with supplying passports. So, big thoughts, there's thousands of them in Ottawa paid to have big thoughts. I don't think there's a lack of big thoughts, there's a lack of people delivering services to Canadians. You don't need an army of people to come up with big thoughts. I think the private sector has no choice (but) to get it right, has no choice to strike a proper balance, because if a large private-sector firm doesn't strike a proper balance, the market will tell it to strike the proper balance. The competition will tell it to strike the proper balance. There is a natural equilibrium in the private sector that happens just because there's competition, there's market forces, there's all kinds of forces that dictate how important it is to run an efficient operation; those forces are not present in the public sector. What I can say is that I wish them well. I think a better solution would be, we have nearly 300 federal organizations, we have 100 federal government programs, I think a better solution would be for the federal government to take a strong look at all its organizations and all its programs and see which ones have long passed their best-by date. See which programs no longer resonate like they did when they were first established. I think there's a lot of pruning of organizations and programs that could take place. The 15 per cent cuts sends a message that every program, every organization holds the same priority, just squeeze 15 per cent. I would've thought a better solution was to see that we have programs that don't fit our agenda. We have organizations that don't serve the purpose that they were initially set up for so why don't we look at that once we've cleaned that up then maybe we can look at the 15 per cent. There are some, not many, I'll give you an example. If you hire an auditor at Revenue Canada, every auditor you hire can generate X amount of revenue. So you hire an auditor and you can expect a return. But for most cases, at least for poets, how do you assess the performance of a poet? That's in the eye of the beholder. The poet can have 101 reasons why things don't work. Fault the politicians, it's the media, not enough resources, there's all kinds of reasons you can grab. You can find markers that work on the delivery side, you don't find markers that work on the poet side. This is the latest in a National Post series on How Canada Wins. Read earlier instalments here. 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