(NOTE: This electronic version of the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner's Annual Report 1996-97 includes corrections for clerical errors that exist in the printed copy.)

I. Commissioner's Message

I recently had the extraordinary personal experience of speaking on access to government information in Canada to a group of public interest lawyers and human rights activists from Central and Eastern Europe. The location was Budapest in Hungary, a country whose strong movement away from communism since 1989 has featured the incorporation of freedom of information and privacy protection rights in the Hungarian Constitution and the enactment, in 1992, of the first law in all of Europe on "Protection of Personal Data and Disclosure of Data of Public Interest." This led to the appointment in 1995 of the first Parliamentary Commissioner (meaning Ombudsman) for Data Protection and Freedom of Information.

Coming from a privileged Western democratic background, I find it truly astonishing, and very moving, that Hungary should have launched its "Rule of Law Revolution" in this manner (reminiscent of the Glorious Revolution of 1688 in England that produced the Bill of Rights). As the first Commissioner, Laszló Majtényi, states, the Hungarian public requires information compensation for their history of oppression by government.

My own exposure to this Hungarian "revolution" served as a wake-up call from the parochial mentality that I have sometimes brought to the politics of freedom of information in this province during the past year. My sense is that FOI has been under attack from both old and new enemies since the 1996 provincial election. The government has been regularly embarrassed, on large and small issues, when public bodies have released records in response to FOI requests. Senior government officials have complained that they were no longer free to give candid advice to their political masters, because of the risks of disclosure of what they write in briefing notes. It was almost as if democracy was being undermined by too much democracy.

I was actually told by a senior public servant that the public's right to know was limited to what they could ask for through their elected representatives. When I countered that this sounded too much like the BBC-TV series, "Yes Minister," there was unabashed acclaim for Sir Humphrey as an outstanding public servant.

Given such experiences, it is no wonder that my visit to Eastern Europe was such a bracing experience. It reminded me that open, accountable, transparent government, at all levels of society, is and should be a fundamental component of any liberal democratic government. That is what the people should demand and what the people should expect. Freedom of information should not be perceived as a gift from a passing leadership or a particular political party. Even more than that, it should not be a simple statute that a particular majority can threaten to gut at the first opportunity.

I have argued for a number of years that the right to privacy should be specifically articulated in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. So should the public's fundamental right of access to all government information. Only the establishment of such explicit constitutional rights to these basic democratic and human values will make possible legal challenges to governmental practices that threaten our fundamental interests as citizens. What is considered essential for Hungarians in a free society should be de rigueur for Canadians as well, federally and provincially.

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