Media Update for May 10, 2010

I start today with a great blog posting by a U.S. sister organization to Canadian for Accountability, the Project on Government Oversight (POGO). It tells how the U.S. Inspector General for the Department of the Interior tried to warn Congress that the department wasn’t doing its job regulating the oil industry – or doing much of anything right, in fact. One memorable quote:

“I have watched a number of high-level Interior officials leave the Department under the cloud of OIG investigations into bad judgment and misconduct. Absent criminal charges, however, they are sent off in usual fashion, with a party paying tribute to their good service; wishing them well, to spend more time with their family or seek new opportunities in the private sector. This charade does not go unnoticed by the career public servants, many of whom have been witnesses in our investigations. What are these civil servants to think? If those at the top are not held accountable, why should those at lower levels not feel empowered to challenge the call for accountability?”

Take out “OIG” and you could be talking about Transport Canada… or any number of other government agencies at the federal and provincial levels in Canada, I’d wager.

Back in Ottawa, the Interim Information Commissioner is under fire in two stories. In one, she is criticized for defending the government’s right to withhold documents pertaining to Tommy Douglas – documents that are 25+ years old. In another, she is taken to task for failing to come down on Public Works and Government Services Canada, which lied to a requester seeking information about lead contamination at an old Canadian Forces rifle range. Some say she is moving cases faster – I would agree, from personal experience – but I don’t like her defence of Robert Marleau, her predecessor, or the fact that so many investigations let bureaucrats off the hook. In the “lapdog” or “watchdog” debate, I’m starting to tip to the lapdog side. Can’t be all carrots and no sticks, Ms. Legault.

See you Thursday.

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U.S. Inspector General Tried to Warn About Problems in Oil Industry Regulator

Federal Information Commissioner Criticized

Afghan Detainee Controversy

Supreme Court Declines to Offer Blanket Protection of Media Sources

Tory MP Shory to Stay on Despite Allegations of Fraud

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U.S. Inspector General Tried to Warn About Problems in Oil Industry Regulator

IG Warned Congress About Failures of MMS, Interior
Project on Government Oversight (blog), May 10, 2010
Summary: An excellent piece on the POGO blog that describes the U.S. Inspector General’s efforts to have problems at the Minerals Management Service – which is the oversight agency of the offshore oil industry down south – addressed.

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Federal Information Commissioner Criticized

Critics wonder if information commissioner more lapdog than watchdog
Calgary Herald, May 9, 2010
Summary: Those who have dealt with secrecy in the federal government aren’t surprised that federal lawyers would fight tooth-and-nail to prevent the disclosure of decades-old records requested under the Access to Information law. What has surprised is that the secrecy is being supported by the Office of the Information Commissioner, the independent watchdog of the access law.

Public Works slow to release lead reports
Ottawa Citizen, May
Summary: Public Works bureaucrats withheld records about lead contamination at the military’s Dwyer Hill training centre in the west end of Ottawa, at first claiming to the Citizen that such documents didn’t exist.

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Afghan Detainee Controversy

Afghan police beatings commonplace, military inquiry finds
Winnipeg Free Press, May 7, 2010
Summary: Afghan authorities routinely beat people “in the street and elsewhere” and most Canadian soldiers knew about it, a military board of inquiry has found. The results of a five-week investigation, released Friday, found troops in Kandahar had lingering concerns about the local police force.

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Supreme Court Declines to Offer Blanket Protection of Media Sources

Media can’t shield sources all the time, top court rules
Ottawa Citizen, May 8, 2010
Summary: By an 8-1 margin, the Supreme Court of Canada Supreme Court of Canada concluded that the press — in a world of tweeters and bloggers — is an ill-defined group and to grant wholesale constitutional immunity ‘would blow a giant hole in law enforcement.’ The legal battle was ignited in 2001, after reporter Andrew McIntosh of the National Post received a plain brown envelope from a source. Information in that envelope led to stories that would become known as the Shawinigate affair.

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Tory MP Shory to Stay on Despite Allegations of Fraud

Harper won’t boot besieged MP Shory from caucus, says case is not like Guergis’
Winnipeg Free Press, May 6, 2010
Summary: What kind of allegation or RCMP scrutiny will get a Conservative booted from caucus? According to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, allegations of a civil or “private” nature don’t cross the line, and that’s why Alberta MP Devinder Shory is still sitting with his Tory colleagues. Shory is one of dozens of people named in a Calgary lawsuit alleging a $70-million mortgage fraud — one of the largest in Canadian history — against the Bank of Montreal.