Treasury Board no access-to-info leader
Treasury Board of Canada, a central agency of the federal government, is Ottawa’s cheerleader for access to information. The institution...
Dean Beeby
While National Newswatch does not keep an archive of external articles for longer than 6 months, we do keep all articles written by contributors who post directly to our site. Here you will find all of the contributed and linked external articles from Dean Beeby.
An error-prone 'transparency'
The pro-active publication of internal documents by governments has long been touted as a cure-all for a dysfunctional access–to-information regime...
Delay is toxic for freedom of information
In public affairs journalism, all information has a best-before date. Citizens want to know what their governments are up to...
Poverty on the rise: memo for Trudeau
An internal memo for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau acknowledges that poverty is on the rise for many Canadians after years...
The disaster at Canada's disaster bunker
The federal government in 2004 created a kind of disaster bunker, where dozens of specialists huddle to co-ordinate an emergency...
RCMP loses handgun - twice
The RCMP has lost one of its handguns - the second time the elusive weapon has disappeared.
RCMP burns 7,000 lbs of uniforms & kit
RCMP in Nova Scotia ordered a mass incineration of discarded Mountie clothing and kit in the province after a murderer...
Ottawa creates virtual news agency
The federal government established a short-lived news agency last fall, generating dozens of fake-news items before the exercise wound down...
Language czar probes CBC's posting of unilingual documents
Canada’s official languages commissioner has launched an investigation into CBC/Radio-Canada’s practice of posting unilingual access-to-information documents on its websites. The...
A small step forward for transparency
In Canada’s doom-laden realm of freedom of information, where bad news is endemic, a ray of sunshine sometimes pierces the...
Hubris and survival in the news industry
A new oral history of the Village Voice, the weekly rag that goosed American journalism for decades, is a pungent...
Canada's access-to-info gamble
Canadians are not whiners by nature, but sometimes frustration about bad service makes us snap. We complain when our flights...
Shackleton's last ship was a dud for polar exploration
Sir Ernest Shackleton’s last expedition ship, which was located on the seafloor off Labrador this week, was reviled by his...
Traffic jam on RCMP car lots
A three-year freeze on the sale of used RCMP vehicles has created such huge storage headaches that the Mounties will...
Anand's misleading plan to combat misinformation
A recent media release from a powerful minister proclaimed the Liberal government’s new “trust and transparency strategy.” Anita Anand announced...
RCMP lax in tracking clothing: internal review
An internal review of the RCMP’s control policies for its uniforms, launched after a gunman used official clothing to impersonate...
A tribute to Canada's first information commissioner
Inger Hansen (1929-2013), Canada’s first information commissioner, knew something about political tyranny and open government. Hansen forfeited a normal childhood...
The access to information dumpster
Good journalists frequently have barbed encounters with flaks for government ministers and departments, who delay, duck and obfuscate when asked...
Trouble in the ring at the RCMP's Musical Ride
There’s trouble in the ring at the RCMP’s iconic Musical Ride, where the horses are well cared for but their...
Abandon hope ye who file FOI requests here
The first line of this century-old stanza is often quoted as a proverb to encourage patience. Few realize the rest...
RCMP hobbled by century-old policing model: minister's briefing
The RCMP receives “insufficient federal investment” to carry out its increased responsibilities as Canada’s national policing service, Public Safety Canada...
Lincoln Alexander's link to freedom of information
Lincoln Alexander’s legacy of facing down racism in Canada is being celebrated again during this year’s Black History Month. Alexander...
Canada needs a morgue for freedom-of-info documents
In their heyday, newspapers maintained ‘morgues,’ musty places where clippings were indexed and stored. Sagacious librarians ran these fiefdoms, locating...
Cabinet secrecy gets a boost
Canada’s top court last week roundly affirmed the confidentiality of cabinet documents, in a ruling that dismissed a challenge to...
British Columbia's wacky FOI follies
Reporters have been bailing on freedom-of-information requests everywhere you look these days. The numbers are sagging federally, as well as...
Even journalists have privacy rights
Journalists are sometimes in the business of keeping secrets. They have a duty to protect the anonymity of their sources...
Knowing where to look for news
A lot of great scoops about government are hiding in plain sight. Open-source documents offering juicy news nuggets are often...
Ontario journalists quitting freedom-of-info
Journalists in Canada have long been minor users of freedom-of-information laws, for reasons that aren’t hard to fathom. Reporters are...
Finding Ed Broadbent
Ed Broadbent (1936-2024), who died this week at age 87, was a decent and honourable Canadian, a skilled politician respected...
Mangled and mutilated: Ottawa's banknote rescue service
Millions of dollars arrive each year at the Bank of Canada in the form of bank notes that are melted...
Ged Baldwin's 50-year-old crusade for freedom of information legislation in Canada
This year is a milestone for government transparency in Canada, marking 50 years since an obscure politician from Western Canada...
RCMP misses key deadline for response to Nova Scotia's mass casualty of 2020
The RCMP has blown past a deadline for responding to a scathing public inquiry into the deaths of 22 Nova...
History’s lessons on reforming the Access to Information Act in Canada
The great Charles Dickens in his 1857 novel Little Dorrit satirized how government bureaucracies serve themselves rather than citizens.