The Con War on Information Continues

In most countries a budget is a tool to control expenses. In Great Robot Leader's Canada it's a weapon to control information.

Exhibit A: Stats Canada. 

Statistics Canada, the national statistics agency, informed its staff late last week that it has been ordered to chop $33.9-million from its planned spending by April 1, 2014.

“The actions to be taken involve a mixture of new efficiency measures and program reductions. Achieving the required savings will necessarily mean a reduction in Statistics Canada’s work force.”

Exhibit B: The Information Commissioner. 

Responding via email to a query on what the cuts will mean for her office, Legault told cbc.ca that the office will "need to reassess its operations once more, and noted that it may also heighten the risk of judicial review applications based on too-long investigations, which could ultimately result in higher cost to the taxpayer. 

 She also worries that "system-wide budget cuts" could have a "significant impact on Access to Information" throughout government, citing comments from her predecessor, John Grace, who observed that "as the public service experiences more and deeper budget cuts, the danger is that officials, already cool to the access law, can cloak themselves in self-righteousness."

If anyone thinks the Con budget is a moderate one, they must be deluded. When they tell you anything Con "could be worse" that's when you check the fine print eh?

Of course, some will be delighted.

The commissioner is currently in the midst of a comprehensive review of alleged interference with access to information requests by political staffers, a self-initiated inquiry that followed her investigation into similar allegations against Sebastien Tognieri, a former aide to then-Industry Minister Christian Paradis, but soon mushroomed to include other departments, including Foreign Affairs and PCO.

But the rest of us should be terrified.

Who controls the past, controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.

Wake up Canada.This budget is a concealed weapon. Stephen Harper is Big Brother.

And ignorance is strength dangerous...