National Defence wins award for its efforts to hide information from the public

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Attempts by National Defence to hide the costs of a multi-billion dollar warship construction project has earned it a top secrecy award from a national journalism organization.

National Defence will receive the “Outstanding Achievement in Government Secrecy” award for taking three years to respond to an access to information request about the cost of the Canadian Surface Combatant program.

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The dubious honour is handed out annually by the Canadian Association of Journalists. The Code of Silence Awards call public attention to government or publicly-funded agencies that work hard to hide information to which the public has a right under access to information legislation.

The department’s attempts to hide the project costs, requested by Ottawa researcher Ken Rubin using the Access to Information law, were chronicled in an article in January in this newspaper.

Rubin eventually receive 1,700 pages of records but all the details of what taxpayers had so far spent and what type of work was done by Irving Shipbuilding for that money were censored.

Critics have labelled the Canadian Surface Combatant (CSC) project, the largest single purchase in Canadian history, as a bottomless money pit with little accountability or oversight. The Parliamentary Budget Officer has reported the CSC will cost more than $80 billion.

National Defence also tried to mislead this newspaper by claiming it took three years to produce the records because Rubin had asked for 20 years of documents. When challenged on that claim, the department acknowledged it wasn’t true.

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“Misleading journalists and returning 1,700 pages of censored documents to a researcher asking a simple question is both Kafkaesque and indefensible,” Brent Jolly, president of the Canadian Association of Journalists, said in a statement. “It shows a galling level of disrespect for the intelligence of Canadians and their right to know how their tax dollars are being spent.”

National Defence did not respond for comment.

The secrecy award for National Defence also noted the three years it took to release to CBC News the documents about what has become known in defence circles as the wolf fiasco. In that case, military officers bungled a propaganda exercise in 2020 in which they tried to spread disinformation about rampaging wolves in Nova Scotia.

In her Feb. 12 testimony to the Commons defence committee Taylor Paxton, the Corporate Secretary for National Defence, stated that department staff work very hard to ensure access requests are answered within the 30 days required by law. “Sometimes it takes longer than the 30 days,” she told MPs.

Defence Minister Bill Blair, however, acknowledged to the same committee that his department violates the law 40 per cent of the time by missing legally required deadlines.

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Critics have pointed out that the military and National Defence are sliding towards more secrecy even as the federal government frees up billions of dollars in additional spending.

The committee has also heard the department continues to withhold a wide range of records, including documents on shipbuilding and fighter jets as well as files needed by military sexual assault survivors for legal purposes.

In addition, some former soldiers have complained they face uphill battles to get the military to release documents needed for medical benefits claims.

The level of secrecy has also been extended to what used to be run-of-the-mill records. Just days after Canada’s top soldier publicly advocated for more openness on defence issues, his office refused to release a copy of that speech.

Instead, the office of Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Wayne Eyre suggested that, if this newspaper wanted a copy of the speech he made in public on March 7, it would have to submit a request under the Access to Information law.

Eyre’s office also declined to explain why it was refusing to release a written copy of the speech made at an Ottawa defence conference. Previously, the Canadian Forces would not only provide transcripts of such speeches, but would also post them online. A copy of the speech by Defence Minister Bill Blair at the same conference on the same day has been posted on a federal government website.

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