One of my primary frustrations as a journalist in recent years has been getting unfettered access to civil servants. We knew pretty much instantly after Stephen Harper was elected that things were going to tighten up when the PMO started deciding which journalists would be allowed to ask the prime minister questions.
Slowly, but surely, this control permeated every interaction with the government at any level, particularly when it comes to science.
It wasn't long before every request for information was met with a variation of, "You will have to go through our media relations people."
According to a Hill Times reporter there are currently some 1,500 media relations people working in Ottawa including 87 in the PMO and Privy Council.
What is worse is, seven years into Harper's iron-fisted rule, the culture of silencing frontline employees and manipulating the message has infected virtually every organization in the country.
As an example, when the Saskatchewan government announced the 950 instructional hours school year, one of my first calls was to the president of the local chapter of the Saskatchewan Teachers Federation. The response? "I'm sorry, we've been asked to refer all media requests to our general secretary, Gwen Dueck."
I've got nothing against talking to Gwen, but there are very good reasons why we want to talk to frontline and, particularly in the case of a community newspaper such as Yorkton This Week, local people.
In comes down to the pertinence of the information from a local perspective.
Furthermore, we live in what is supposed to be a pluralistic society in which all people have a right to express their opinions. By stifling discourse except for approved government messaging, Harper is trampling not only the fundamental democratic principle of free and open access to information as protected by the Access to Information Act (AIA), but individuals' right to free speech as protected by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Even Harper's own caucus is starting to rebel. Last week, several Tory backbenchers got up in the House of Commons to complain they were being muzzled by the PMO.
These are the social conservatives who the prime minister obviously has a vested interest in keeping quiet because they are so out of touch with the concept of a modern pluralist democracy they constantly wind up shooting themselves, their party and their leader in the political foot.
But while I vehemently disagree with their particular brand of crazy, I equally vehemently defend their right to say what they want to say.
Harper has often been criticized as being a control freak and nothing could be more telling of this than the toe-the-party-line reaction of MPs-particularly those who had raised the concerns in the first place-after a caucus meeting following the mini-rebellion,
Still, while this rip in Harper's communications iron curtain was being exposed, the federal information commissioner's office announced it was launching a sweeping investigation of several departments in response to a complaint by Democracy Watch and the Environmental Law Clinic (ELC) at the University of Victoria.
A letter to Suzanne Legault, information commissioner, cites "systematic efforts by the Government of Canada to obstruct the right of the media-and through them, the Canadian Public-to timely access to government scientists."
The letter summarizes the contents of a 128-page report entitled Muzzling Civil Servants: A Threat to Democracy? by ELC law student Clayton Greenwood and Calvin Sandborn, the clinic's legal director, that can only be described as shocking except that we have seen it all before under the George W. Bush administration in the United States.
The report outlines several case studies, complete with memos and emails obtained under the Access to Information Act that demonstrate the Conservative Party's obstructionist policies in action.
There are cases of interviews being refused outright, scripts for scientists to follow in order to spin the government's message and scientists being shadowed by communications hacks at open conferences.
Of course, obfuscation is not the only tactic in Stephen Harper's bag of tricks. We saw with the closing of the Northern Ontario Experimental Lakes Area in March that the P.M. is perfectly willing to shut 'em down if he can't shut 'em up.
Then there is Bill C-461 directly attacking the media itself. Critics of this private member's bill claim it seeks to undermine the CBC's journalistic independence and integrity by redefining an exemption in the AIA designed to protect confidential CBC sources and intellectual property.
The sponsor of the legislation, Conservative Alberta MP Brent Rathgeber, says it is necessary to bring greater accountability to the public broadcaster.
It is no secret Conservatives despise the CBC because it practices objective journalism. Right-wingers define objective as liberal-bias. It is another classic tactic straight out of the Bush Republican playbook. Rathgeber himself has said he sees no need for public broadcasting and Harper has been chipping away at the CBC's budget ever since he took office, so what can this legislation be, but a thinly-veiled attempt to harm the public broadcaster?
Finally, private member's bills rarely become law, yet this one has breezed through two readings in the House of Commons making me think it is actually a Government bill strategically disguised as a private member's bill.
It also occurs to me that the Con's disregard for the AIA when it comes to drafting departmental communications policies, but sudden respect for the Act when it comes to the CBC shows a level of hypocrisy that can only be described as cynical.
The taxpayer-funded CBC should absolutely be held accountable-as should every government department and, indeed, the Houses of Parliament. This bill is not necessary to do that as the Supreme Court has already clarified the clause in question in the Government's favour.
I will look forward to the results of the information commissioner's investigation on muzzling civil servants, but even if she rules that government policies are contrary to the AIA, there is little likelihood anything will change. Harper has demonstrated time and again contempt for our democratic institutions and there is no reason to think this time will be any different.
I'm not trying to say the perversion of science for political reasons is strictly a right-wing phenomenon, but that is precisely why journalists need unfettered and timely access to unfiltered information. It is difficult enough to be informed on complex scientific issues without having to wade through the political spin or navigate the lethargic communications bureaucracy. And, as any good reporter knows, when people are trying to hide something there is usually something fishy going on.
Fortunately, there is a way back to sanity as the experience of our southern neighbour demonstrates. After taking office in 2008, President Barack Obama revoked the Bush gag orders and started to reverse the Republican war on science.
One of the case studies in Greenwood's and Sandborn's report shows how quickly things can turn around.
Last year, Tom Spears, a reporter with the Ottawa Citizen, was writing about regional snowfall patterns and came across a relevant citation on the NASA website about a joint study between the American space agency and Canada's National Research Council (NRC).
He called NASA and spoke directly to one of the scientists involved in the study, a process he claims "took about 15 minutes." That would have been as unthinkable under Bush as it turned out to be for Spears when he tried to contact scientists at the NRC.
The 2015 federal election cannot come soon enough.
