By arthur Weinreb, associate Editor,
Wednesday, august 2, 2006
It was recently discovered that the federal government "quietly" increased the salaries of top executives, deputy ministers and the heads of Crown corporations. No public announcement of these salary increases was made; rather the changes were posted on the website of the Treasury Board. That, according to a Treasury Board spokesman, was sufficient notice to the public of what their government is doing.
John Williamson, director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation criticized the actions of the government in the way that these announcements were made. Williamson told CP, "What troubles me is this is a government that was elected to ensure greater transparency, and they've decided to shelve a public announcement. It's not so much the pay raise that bothers me as the way it was quietly stated."
Williamson makes a good point. The government is "technically" correct that they did release the fact that some top employees of the government and Crown corporations to the public by putting it on a website that the public can access. Then again, it could hardly be said to have been "transparent". Making announcements on government websites is not the kind of transparency that Stephen Harper promised that he would implement when campaigning for power.
as strange as it seems to many of us, not everyone has access to the Internet. This is especially true of older Canadians who are the most likely to vote in the next election. although younger people are more Internet savvy, not only are they less likely to vote, but it is doubtful that they are combing government websites looking for the latest news on the policy and practices of the federal government.
But even assuming that all Canadians have access and the know-how to comb through government websites looking for announcements, this is still not sufficient disclosure of what the government is doing. are people expected to spend their days searching all of the government's websites to see what, if anything, is new? This is an unrealistic burden to put on people and even the media cannot be expected to spend all day on the Internet in the hopes of discovering something new and newsworthy. News of what the government is doing only becomes transparent when public announcements and press releases are issued so that the media (including the Internet media) can perform their proper function of informing the citizenry.
For example, when the current Middle East conflict began on July 12, Prime Minister Harper came out strongly for Israel. There is a lot of interest amongst Canadians as to what is currently taking place in Israel and Lebanon. as the situation is so fluid, there are daily occurrences that might cause Harper and the government of Canada to make further policy announcements or change their position on the war. are Canadians expected to constantly be checking government websites to see if there is or will be a change in Canadian foreign policy? If it is, people would have very little time to do anything else.
In a letter to the editor during the last federal election campaign, the writer pondered how anyone could say that the Tories had a "hidden agenda" when their policy platform was clearly set out on the party's website. There may come a time in the future when all of our news and information will come from the source's Internet site. Perhaps we will be spared the endless political speeches by politicians in what seems to endless election campaigns and just go straight to the Internet to get all of the information that is necessary to make an informed choice about who to vote for. But that day is not yet here and relying on a posting on a government website in order to find out what the government is doing is simply not sufficient.
It's no secret that Stephen Harper is not the media's greatest fan and would no doubt love to restrict the release of information to the public through the use of government websites. But there is no way that it can be seriously argued that posting salary increases on the Treasury Board's site is fulfilling the Conservatives' promise of greater transparency in government.
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