As generals have their classic tactics in war - pincer, envelopment - governments have theirs in blocking the free-flow of information: paper flooding. A 'paper flood' is a torrent of documents sent in response to an Access to Information (ATIP) request with each detailburied in a vast pile of hardened pulp.

Recent requests by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) into what the federal government spent on advertizing its stimulus (read deficit) campaign were met by rebuffs from central government departments (such as Treasury Board and Public Works) to file other requests with an array of specific departments. Each and every one of the departments filed with, flooded theCTF's Ottawa office with hundreds of pages of documents, specifying individual (and essentially) meaningless media buys.

For example: Finance Canada bought 60 seconds in Edmonton, played in Cantonese on Omni News. It also paid for an ad-space in the Valley Times, a local paper in Port Alberni, BC. All fine and great, but 111 pages of spreadsheets for a single department's advertising means that in practical terms, you have no information. 

Check out HRSDC's response to the CTF: 200 pages of alphabetized words used for 'Google Ad-Word' purchases. 

The "stimulus" campaign and the critical plan to sell it to Canadians with their own money is wasteful enough, but the government's attempts hide how much is really costs is just the latest break in its 2006 campaign promise to bring accountability to Ottawa.

By: Derek Fildebrandt
Posted: March 08, 2010
Topic: Federal

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