Over the last 7 years it has become a known fact the BC NDP government has been one of the most secretive governments. In 2021, Canadian Association of Journalists gave The Code of Silence award in “Outstanding Achievement in Government Secrecy” to the BC NDP government.
The government isn’t supposed to be shielded from public scrutiny and review by BC voters, taxpayers and media especially when it comes to radical policies, spending taxpayer money and other things.
Unfortunately that’s a fault in the BC Legislation and the BC NDP is taking advantage of exploiting that flaw.
The BC NDP government is the party of fees, delays and redactions.
BC taxpayers including local and national media have experienced the same kind of hurdles with Freedom of Information Act requests with now having to pay fees for access to public documents which can run up into thousands of dollars if multiple requests are required to request related documents from other ministries or sources.
“It is important to remember that these are more than just numbers on a chart. The wait times involve real people trying to get information about themselves, or about the government who serves them — individuals trying to get a record of their dealings with a particular ministry, or a journalist working with a deadline on a story impacting a multitude of individuals,” McEvoy said in his report.
Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE) board member Patti Sonntag criticize the BC NDP government for “significantly walking back transparency legislation” which “has undermined freedom of the press and the public’s ability to monitor the provincial government’s actions,”
Although that was when John Horgan was premier before handing over his majority government to David Eby but nothing has changed under David Eby to make government more transparent and accountable to the public.
In many of the big spending projects more than half of the documents get provided with a heavy amount of redactions which calls into question the governments commitment to transparency and drives the public trust down.
Open government and politicians to face public scrutiny.
Another thing to help strengthen transparency and accountability. The code of conduct for government and officials communications need an upgrade to align with the digital times.
Official government messaging accounts on social media need to be prohibited from blocking users and turning off comments. Accounts without real names attached do not automatically equal “bots” or another negative label.
A politician getting hurt feelings because someone disagrees with them or was embarrassed by a counter point with statistics and facts to back it up isn’t a good excuse for blocking that person and claiming they are a bot or “hateful.”
Privacy is a right in Canada. Government and politicians better learn to recognize that fact. There’s a number of different reasons an individual wouldn’t attach their name to the account including possibly losing their job for non work related things because of cancel culture pressures or holding a differing opinion than that of their corporate overlords.
When politicians block other online users they are also blocking constituents with real concerns voicing their opinion or to discuss with others in the comment threads which is a form of government censorship and dodging public scrutiny. Blocking comments on the other hand reduces debate to just one way communications being dictated at the people.
What kind of government is afraid of being challenged by the people?
It’s impossible for a government to be accountable to the people when there’s no transparency or consequences for government and politicians acting in bad faith.
BC needs legislative changes to tackle the government transparency issues and regain public trust. To learn more about our ideas for Freedom of Information and Government Accountability click here.
With the election coming up it’s the perfect time to be asking your political candidates from each party in your riding what they are going to do to address the extreme government secrecy problem. If they are in government now you should be asking why their government is hiding information from voters and what are they going to do to make government more transparent and provide a time line.
