Now I'm Angry!

Now Canada's Information Commissioner John Reid, after reviewing the new Conservative Accountabilty Act is saying the act actually makes the government less accountable and makes it easier to hide information from the public. Although I would expect dirty tricks from Stephen Harper's top-down corporate-government model, this is going at the root of what his campaign was based on, as if restricting media access and barring government officials from speaking publicly wasn't enough.

According to today's Toronto Star:

OTTAWA - Prime Minister Stephen Harper has done a complete about-face,
introducing plans that would increase government secrecy after campaigning on
openness, says Canada’s information czar.
The proposed Accountability Act,
now being debated in the House of Commons, will actually make government less
accountable when it comes to making information available to Canadians,
Information Commissioner John Reid said Friday.
In a special report to
Parliament, Reid said no government has ever put forward "a more retrograde and
dangerous" set of proposals to change the Access to Information Act since the
legislation first came into effect in 1983.
The Accountability Act, and
other reforms being proposed, will "increase the government’s ability to cover
up wrongdoing, shield itself from embarrassment and control the flow of
information to Canadians," says the scathing report. Reid noted that while in
opposition, Harper railed against the Liberals for failing to reform a system
that encouraged civil servants to withhold information and allowed abuses such
as the sponsorship scandal to flourish undetected.
But the Tories are now
guilty of the same abusive behaviour as they try to make government less
transparent, he said.
“The new government has done exactly the things for
which its predecessor had been ridiculed,” says the report.

Can somebody please explain to me why the Harper government seems to be getting more popular at the polls? This is just making me sick. MP's that hide from their constituents and are unable to speak freely without Harper's approval, shooing the media away from anything controversial, and now this. We better hope that this stuff gets spread around, and maybe a few more scandals just in time for the next election. We cannot let this guy have a majority!