PM’s agenda exempt: Top court rejects request for release
By MIKE DE SOUZA and AMY MINSKY, Postmedia News May 14, 2011
montrealgazette.com
The country’s top court has restricted the ability for Canadians to hold their government to account, Canada’s information czar said in response to a Supreme Court decision handed down Friday on access to the prime minster’s daily agenda.
In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court of Canada sided with the government and rejected a request to grant public access to the prime minister’s daily appointment book and other ministerial documents.
That request, filed under federal access-to-information legislation, was launched in 1999 by a then-Reform party researcher who now serves as a political staffer for a federal cabinet minister.
The court concluded Friday that the existing laws do not require the release of all records in the offices of the prime minister and cabinet members.
“(Canadians) should be concerned,” said Suzanne Legault, Canada’s information commissioner. “If they don’t know what is occurring in some very important meetings, then they have no idea of the basis of the decisions government is making on their behalf.”
My thoughts on this are big surprise! Since when have the Canadian people ever been able to find out what is on the agenda, in closed door meetings? We didn’t get to with NAFTA or the SPP, and it will be no different with the new North American Security Perimeter deal or CETA.
Why would they allow the peasants of Canada to actually see what they are planning for our nation?
But then again, this is just one more example of how we do not live in a free society. Every time something like this comes out. Many more seeds of truth are planted.
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“Why would they allow the peasants of Canada to actually see what they are planning for our nation?” – to answer the previous sentence:
Actually we CANADIANS are not consider citizens or “peasant” of the land never mind owner of the land, but subjects of the majesty of the land.
Time that all Canadians take the rightful name of CITIZEN and OWNER of CANADA. It is time that we the Canadian government take the rightful rights of this land. This will need a generation of real leaders…
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