OTTAWA - CBC may demand accountability from the government but Canada’s taxpayer-funded broadcaster is going to court once again in order to keep its own affairs secret.
The CBC will square off against the information commissioner, an independent officer of Parliament, in a Montreal courtroom on Sept. 13. After hearing from a number of sources, including Sun Media, about problems with CBC’s response to access to information requests, the commissioner subpoenaed a number of files. The CBC refused.
It’s not the first run in between the state broadcaster and the Access to Information Act. The CBC became subject to the act in 2007, since then close to 900 complaints have been filed. While some of those cases were resolved and a small number were found to be without merit, as of June the information commissioner had 498 active complaints against CBC.
By comparison Canada Post, the organization to receive the second highest level of complaints, only had 116 complaints filed total.
In the case before the court on Sept. 13, the CBC is arguing that to release the information would jeopardize the Crown corporation’s “journalistic, creative or programming activities.”
Two days later on Sept. 15, the CBC will be in court again to keep more information secret.
In that case lawyer Michel Drapeau, who is an access to information specialist that works with Sun Media and other news organizations, will appeal a lower court decision that ruled the CBC did not need to hand over information in a number of other cases.
Drapeau said the CBC broke the law by missing deadlines and failing to provide any response to several requests, other than an acknowledgement that a request had been received.
In one case Drapeau described the document he did receive as being more redacted than the Afghan detainee documents that the CBC has demanded the Harper government release.
“There were 1,562 pages. Only about 30 pages had any information on them and that was just a statement that certain pages were not available,” said Drapeau. “The right of access is quasi-constitutional right and one of the foundations of democracy, that’s what the Supreme Court said. The public needs to be informed in order to make decisions.”
Some documents requested have gone without a reply for more than two years.
Lawyers for the information commissioner have argued in court that allowing the CBC to ignore access to information requests will weaken the entire system and that other government agencies and departments will copy what the CBC does.
