“Death is terrifying because it is so ordinary. It happens all the time.” – Susan Cheever
OTTAWA-The federal Conservatives have quietly killed a giant information registry that was used by lawyers, academics, journalists and ordinary citizens to hold government accountable.
The registry, created in 1989, is an electronic list of every request filed to all federal departments and agencies under the Access to Information Act.
Known as CAIRS, for Co-ordination of Access to Information Requests System, the database allowed ordinary citizens to identify millions of pages of once-secret documents that became public through individual freedom-of-information requests over many years.
But in a notice last week to civil servants on the Treasury Board website, officials posted an innocuous obituary: effective April 1, 2008, “the requirement to update CAIRS is no longer in effect.”
A spokesman for Treasury Board confirmed Friday that the system is being killed because “extensive” consultations showed it was not valued by government departments.
The full article is available at TheStar.com
The Community Access Program and its Youth Initiative, which provide affordable access to the Internet and training programs for disadvantaged populations in Canada, are in grave danger of disappearing. If you care about public access to the Internet (and you should), please write to Industry Canada’s minister Jim Prentice (ministre.industrie@ic.gc.ca), the Prime Minister of Canada (pm@pm.gc.ca), your Member of Parliament and your local mayor and tell them.
For more information, see the full press release below.
Le Programme d’accès communautaire à Internet et son Initiative Jeunesse, qui permettent l’accès abordable à Internet et offrent des programmes de formation aux populations desavantagées au Canada, sont en grand danger de disparaître. Si vous tenez à l’accès public à Internet (et vous devriez), écrivez au ministre d’Industrie Canada Jim Prentice (ministre.industrie@ic.gc.ca) ainsi qu’au Premier Ministre du Canada (pm@pm.gc.ca), votre député et votre maire et dites-leur.
Pour plus d’informations, veuillez consulter le communiqué de presse ici-bas.
Continue reading… the end of public access?/la fin de l’accès public ?