There’s something about this frivolous and vexatious thing that caught people’s attention right from the start. Under the provincial Conservatives’ new secrecy laws, a cabinet minister can refuse to disclose information if he or she thinks the request is “frivolous or vexatious”. (sec. 43.1) Leave aside the idea that a
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The Sir Robert Bond Papers: Your Law School called… #nlpoli
The more they talk, the worse it gets. In the House of Assembly on Thursday, justice minister Felix Collins gave some examples of what he would consider "frivolous and vexatious” requests for information. Now before we go any further, we should explain what those words usually mean to lawyers. After
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: And that was the point, Felix #nlpoli
Justice minister Felix Collins and his colleagues are having a bad week. Felix and his buds want to limit public access to government information. They want to make it harder for people to find out what they are doing with public money. People don’t like it and they’ve been making
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: The Vanished Records #nlpoli
Under changes to the province’s access to information law, briefing notes for cabinet ministers will be kept secret for five years. Sounds like it might make some sort of theoretical sense. Wait five years and then you can get the briefing note a minister used. That’s hardly too much to
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: The Secrets Policeman’s Bollocks #nlpoli
CBC demolished the false claims a couple of Conservative cabinet ministers made in order to justify their efforts to destroy the public’s access to government information. Justice minister Felix Collins claimed that they had to cut down the number of information requests, which he said numbered in the thousands each
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: You would fight against disclosure too… #nlpoli
Rarely does one cabinet minister put on not one or two spectacular displays of incompetence in one session of the legislature, but justice minister Felix Collins has done that this spring in less than a month. First, there was Collins’ pathetic effort to explain why he and his colleagues would
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: Freedom from Information: the sorry Connie legacy #nlpoli
“We will amend the Access to Information legislation to enhance the transparency of government actions and decisions.” Danny Williams, Leader of the Opposition, February 2003 There truly is a greater fraud than a promise unkept. That would be the promise that is consciously and deliberately broken. In February 2003, the
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