OTTAWA, ON: The Canadian Taxpayers Federation Federal Director Aaron Wudrick released the following statement in response to the Office of the Information Commissioner’s call for further resources to support government transparency:

“We strongly support the Information Commissioner’s call for the Trudeau government to provide additional funding to ensure a properly functioning access-to-information system.

“Transparency and accountability go together and are essential elements of a properly functioning democracy. This is especially true in times of crisis. Simply put, Canadians require transparency in order to hold their government to account.

“The CTF alone files hundreds of access to information requests annually, and the same is true of many other organizations, including media outlets. It is simply not acceptable for the government to use the pandemic as a pretext to undermine our transparency laws.”