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The culture of secrecy.
The Canadian Newspaper Association has completed the first Freedom-of-Information audit across Canada. The audit was done by 89 reporters from 45 papers, over a two-month period from February to April. The reporters acted as private citizens attempting to obtain information that should be public. The results, which varied from province to province, weren't good:
Reporters visited city halls, police forces, school boards and federal government offices seeking public records on such routine matters as employee sick days, classroom sizes and road repairs. Government officials granted the information requested in just 32 per cent of in-person visits. Even when reporters paid fees for formal access requests, the information was fully or partially released in only 62 per cent of cases.In some cases, reporters were told that it would cost thousands of dollars to provide information that should be easily available. Locally the police force stated that freedom of information requests would not be approved for sick day information - something which should be publicly available.[...]
A disturbing trend identified in the audit was the degree of questioning by bureaucrats aimed at people requesting information. In some cases, officials became more forthcoming once they learned the person seeking information was a reporter. Canada's information laws stipulate the identities of those making requests and their reasons for wanting information need not be provided to access public records.