Osprey Media. - Brantford Expositor

This is an excellent expose of what afflicts the public in Ontario. Let all parties make visibilty and accountablity of our public institutions a priority platform PR

Osprey Media. - Brantford Expositor: "Public routinely kept in dark, Osprey survey shows

James Wallace
Queens Park - Thursday, March 08, 2007

Osprey News Network

Secrecy, stone-walling, manipulation and ignorance within Ontario institutions is undermining fundamental public rights to hold government accountable, a four-month survey by Osprey Media newspapers has found.

In many cases, municipalities, police forces, hospitals, universities and provincial bodies supported by taxpayer dollars routinely deny, reject, delay or challenge requests for information that should be public and easily accessible.

For example, police in Cornwall refused to identify a high school that had been vandalized by two teens on the grounds the school was “like a victim” and police are not required to identify victims of crime.

Such concerns are familiar to Brian Beamish, Assistant Commissioner Access at Ontario’s Office of Information and Privacy.

Beamish said the findings of the Osprey survey come as no surprise to him and called on public institutions across the province to “embrace the spirit of openness” contained within Ontario’s Freedom of Information Act.

“There are definitely situations described (in the Osprey survey) where out expectation would be that information would be disclosed even without the need for a formal FOI request,” Beamish said.

“They seem quite clear these are situations where information should be made freely available to the public as a matter of course,” he said.

Premier Dalton McGuinty also expressed concern at the failure of some public institutions to readily release in"