Hi, kids. Fake Ouimet here. Still fake, still not Ouimet.
Anyway, you’ll recall this newspaper article from Moncton. It gave us the useful phrase Natural (or National) Governing Broadcaster and included the following bemusing statement (emphasis added):
I think I might be getting the runaround from this publicly-funded organization, which just this week, complained through its Chairman Tim Casgrain that it is getting too many RTA requests – 150 already this year.
OK. A hundred and fifty requests is an average of three a week. If it takes a quarter-day to enter each request into the computer (I could do it in 20 minutes tops), that still leaves the equivalent of all day Tuesday and Thursday and 2¼ other days to do the actual work of digging up the records, inflating the cost for having done so, sending out letters demanding payment of that inflated cost, and responding to more than 500 complaints lodged with the Information Commissioner.
The Corpse has, what, four people in the ATIP office now? This seems like a manageable workload even to a procrastinator like me.
And anyway, hadn’t the threshold for inconvenience already been set rather high? Recall that Michel Drapeau alone has filed over 800 requests. That was over how long a period of time – eight months? a year?
So how many information requests can they handle? One a week? None?
It’s understood that the Tories have ordered government departments to obstruct information requests and to red-flag anything that’s embarrassing. But they’re sure as hell not going to do the same thing to make it easier for the CBC, now, are they?
I’d say Corpse mandarins had better get used to being in full compliance with the law – which has, incidentally, a deliciously appropriate name: The Federal Accountability Act.