For years, Sean Holman held B.C. politicians’ feet to the fire with his work at Public Eye Online. Combining an investigative journalist’s nose for news with the dogged determination of a blogger, Sean was a key contributor to public policy in this province.

Then Sean moved to Alberta, became a famous documentary filmmaker, and started teaching journalism to the next generation of reporters.

He’s still there – but he’s launched a twice-monthly column, Sean Holman’s Unknowable Country, and I for one am thrilled.

Here’s an excerpt from his first piece:

In other words, on paper, our top political officials are ghosts in the machinery of government.

It is they who pull the levers. And, yet, their fingerprints are often rendered invisible to the citizens they supposedly represent.

It’s easy to disagree with such opacity — making it easy, as Legault has, to conclude that freedom of information is the expression of our core values.

Yet I wonder how many Canadians would disagree with the assumption that privacy is necessary for decision-making?

Because once you accept that assumption, as many of our political leaders have, it becomes easier to reject requests for information about such decisions.

What that says about our core values is admittedly debatable. It suggests freedom of information is not an expression of those values or, at the very least, that we have conflicting values.

But what’s undeniable is that, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, we find ourselves residents of an unknowable country.

Needless to say, Sean’s column will be a regular stop for me on the Interwebs. It should be for you too.