I've used access to information before.  It works.  You get good stuff.  But to find out that after I had coughed up the cash to get some tidbit of information someone else could get it for free was annoying.  It bothered me on two counts:

• First, let him pay for the information.  I hate freeloaders.
• Second, when I ask for information, that's between me and some government department.  It's not your business to know what I'm asking about (even if my personal details are not released).

But the CAIRS database did exactly that -- let everyone know what was being searched for:

Created in 1989 and revamped in 2001, the CAIRS database is a monthly compilation of all Access requests received by federal agencies. Canadians could use it to see the information that had already been made public or was in the process of being released, and could then make a request to see the documents themselves.

The government is closing down CAIRS, and not the notion of access to information.  Still, according to Liberal Party leader Stephane Dion, CAIRS Is critical to open government.  Transparency requires that all branches of the government know what requests are being made to other branches of the government.

You know, when you say it that way, alarm bells ought to go off.  How is openness in government enhanced when you have two government agencies with some overlap in responsibility, and once agency gives the heads up to the other one that someone is snooping around?

Elizabeth Thompson confirms that this is indeed the case. CAIRS is not about helping Canadian citizens know about what their government is doing, but an early warning system to help coordinate how different government branches release information -- presumably to make sure no one department gives away too much information:

What is also being missed in this debate is that CAIRS - first introduced under Conservative Brian Mulroney's government - was intended as a tool to restrict access to government information - not to make it more available. Prior to the CAIRS database, coordination between departments was sketchy. Savvy journalists knew that it was often very useful to send access requests to several different departments because there was a good chance that different departments would release different parts of the paper trial (sometimes severing different parts of the same document) allowing you to piece together more of what was happening behind closed government doors.

Once the CAIRS database was up and running, departments could check and see if another department had received a similar request then coordinate their efforts so that everyone released exactly the same material.

This wasn't an unintended consequence of CAIRS.  That was the whole point of CAIRS. 

But don't take my word for it. Here is an exerpt from former Access to Information Commissioner John Grace's 1991/92 annual report (H/T to researcher extraordinaire Kirsten Smith)

"The Commissioner can be more supportive of those who suspect that the CAIR system was not designed primarily to help government manage access requests. By subjecting the requests to "computer surveillance" some users feel that the system is a tool to reduce openness to its lowest common denominator. In the pre-CAIR days (carefree?), inconsistent responses by different departments to requests for the same records ensured that the level of access rose to the level set by the most open department. After CAIR, departments receiving similar request consult!"

"One need not subscribe to theories of conspiracy to recognize the merits of a thorough evaluation of the operations of the CAIR system."

Elizabeth Thompson does make the valid point access to information has, in general, gotten slower since the Conservatives have taken over, even as the number of government-funded organization subjected to access to information has grown.  As such, the question of CAIRS is an irrelevant distraction to what should be the real debate, except inasmuch as shutting down CAIRS is actually a step in the right direction.

Leave it to the Liberals to label an action taken by the Conservatives that would actually make access to information more effective and misread it entirely.

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