The Canadian Taxpayers Federation's (CTF) mission is threefold: lower taxes, less waste and accountable government. Of the three, it's accountable government that has taken centre stage in recent years. At the heart of accountable government is information and access to government records.

The CTF is proud to be a leading participant and sponsor of the national "Right to Know Week." During the first week of October each year, numerous activities across the country highlight the importance of access to information laws. The spirit and intent of these laws is to provide citizens with the same access to information as their governments. Citizens and taxpayers have a right to know what their government is doing with their dollars and how government programs and services are being managed. Information belongs to citizens, not their government.

Federal and provincial governments each have their own access and privacy laws - some better than others. In Manitoba, the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA) sets out the parameters for disclosure of provincial, crown and municipal government documents and information. To a limited extent, the current government has recognized the importance of access to information by proclaiming Right to Know Week and making public Orders in Council (decisions made by cabinet without debate in the legislature) albeit only part of the information is available. Posting items such as opinion polls paid for by taxpayers and cabinet minister's expenses on the web, would demonstrate a much deeper commitment to openness and transparency.

When it comes to access requests, both the provincial and municipal governments have increasingly either denied access or imposed onerous payments. Under FIPPA legislation, an applicant is granted two hours of "free" research time (the CTF in a FIPPA review submission recommended this be increased to three hours), a fee is assessed if more time is required to fulfill the request, i.e. photo copying or computer programming, etc. There has been a 50 percent increase in fees since 2000. This increase amounts to an obvious and significant barrier to access government information.

Perhaps most egregious has been the provincial government's failure to enact much needed changes to FIPPA that would help strengthen the legislation allowing citizens to hold their government accountable for the tax dollars they spend. An obvious example would be to change the third party disclosure clauses of the act to allow access to records when government enters into a contract with a service provider.

In recognition of "Right to Know Week in Manitoba, several organizations, advocates and media are calling on the provincial government to actively disclose records to the public. Rather than citizens having to go through the onerous process of filing FIPPA requests, they should be able to contact any government department or agency and request the information of interest to them. The onus should be on government to demonstrate why information should not be made available; rather than citizens having to demonstrate why government information should be available to them.

To that end, the CTF, together with the Manitoba Ombudsman, Canadian Association of Journalists, Winnipeg Sun, Winnipeg Free Press, Provincial Council of Women and the Manitoba Bar Association have hosted a panel on citizen's right to know on access to information. Unfortunately the provincial minister responsible for the legislation didn't see fit to attend.