Leaks, Laws and Jason Kenny

The Leak and the Law.

For the last two days, Liberals and Conservatives have traded attacks over a breach of Canada's Privacy Act.

In short strokes, a Canadian Press journalist filed an Access to Information Request (ATIP) which is way of requesting information or documents from the government. That's not an odd thing for a journalist to do.

There are clear rules on how to process these requests; one of those rules (under the Privac Act) is that no one is allowed to know the name of the person who is making the request. That is the law.

As it turns out, the name of a reporter making a request was provided in mid-March to six senior political staffers, including Harpers Director of Communications.

What should have happened next is this. They should have reported to their departments' ATIP coordinnators as soon as they saw the name.

That does not appear to have happened.

Yesterday, Stephen Owen and Marlene Jennings nailed the government on this.

The first line of defence was that the government knew nothing about this. Then, as the day wore on, it was revealed none of the assistants had read the e-mail.

(Funny, the e-mail was synopsis about CIA planes landing in Canada. I might have read that one...)

Today, the Information Commissioner started yet another investigation of the Harper government.

And an Info Czar investigation is no fun. There is no right to counsel, no right refuse the request, everything is under oath and therefore subject to perjury and contempt laws.

Kenny the Snowman.

Kenny struck back with the snow-job of the century. According to CP:

"These types of summary reports were regularly shared with members of the previous government's prime minister's communications office,'' Kenny said. "We are going to put a stop to the Liberal practice of bureaucrats sending such information to political staff, which never should have happened in the first place.''

Nonsense.

In my entire time in a minister's office, I was neither offered the names, nor did I ask for them.

Of course, Kenny know's the story is a mix-up as well. He was citing the Assistant Secretary to the Cabinet who it appears briefed him that sending synopses of meeting was de rigeur, which it was. What was not normal or standard practice was sending the names of ATIP applicants.

Scott Reid responded in the same story:

The names of access to information recipients were not shared with the PMO of which I was a part,'' said Scott Reid, who served as Martin's director of communications. "If Mr. Kenney has suggested that it was standard practice for those names to be shared with the former PMO, he is absolutely mistaken.''

Keep an eye on this.

Kenny will have to clarify exactly what the Assistant Secretary to Cabinet said.

The real issue here is when did anyone who's name is on the e-mail realize and mistake had been made, and fix it.

If the answer is no one, then everyone has a real problem.