Despite Manitoba's MLAs being back to work, an important report passed
over their desks with scant notice. The 2006 Annual Report on Access and Privacy prepared by the Manitoba Ombudsman's office was quietly presented to the Legislative Assembly with little to no discussion on what its 86 pages contained.

The Ombudsman's office is responsible for promoting "fairness, equity and administrative accountability through the investigation of complaints by
an independent and non-partisan Officer of the Legislative Assembly." Within this mandate, the Ombudsman investigates complaints under the Freedom of Information & Privacy Protection Act (FIPPA) -- arguably the province's most important piece legislation providing accountability to taxpayers.

The Freedom of Information law was introduced in Manitoba in 1988, and has since become an important tool to pry open the closed doors of government. But judging from the Ombudsman's report, there are still major obstacles for the public to gain access to information.

In 2006 alone, 314 access and privacy files were opened by the Ombudsman's office, and 247 cases were carried over from 2005. A year by year comparison shows the number of complaints increasing, with little action from the government to reverse the trend.

In many cases, there are legitimate reasons for denying access such as one requester wanting to know how much his neighbour paid to purchase land or a third party requesting medical records. But for the most part, information is denied by some faceless bureaucrat with little to no explanation - thus the backlog!

Many in government -- shocking revelation -- are loathe to release
information that may be embarrassing. Case in point: the city of Winnipeg
adamantly refusing to release taxpayer funded polling data. After a lengthy
investigation which was "hampered by incomplete and delayed responses by the city," the Ombudsman found she was unable to reconcile the reason the city used to deny access to the polling information and went on to state "[the city] was not keeping with the spirit and intent of the legislation."

Another barrier is having to endure a bureaucratic process of filing a request for information that should be automatically available through routine disclosure. Another finding in the report revealed 111 requests to Manitoba Conservation in one year. With only one access coordinator working on these requests, a significant and unacceptable backlog resulted. The Ombudsman's response is sensible and transparent: "proactively releasing public information is to make it available on the department's web site. Another way is to identify documents that can be routinely released when someone asks for them."

The Ombudsman goes on to say that it is important for the information law to
be strengthened, something the Canadian Taxpayers Federation has been demanding for years.

With a record number of complaints, and too many obstacles put in the
public's way to gain access to information - that is the public's
information, not the politicians' -- it's time the government settle from the shine of their election victory and get back to work on adopting the Ombusdsman's important recommendations that are central to government accountability.