The Information Commissioner is very unhappy about the government’s move to retroactively change the law to protect the RCMP for destroying gun registry records despite promises to her office that they wouldn’t in order to fulfil Access to Information requests. That the RCMP broke the law by destroying the information, and the government is protecting them by retroactively changing the law and putting that change in the middle of the omnibus budget bill, sets a very bad precedent, she warns, and she’s right. While the government wanted the long-gun registry data destroyed for political purposes, there was other information of value in the data that wound up being destroyed that had little to do with any future attempts at recreating a registry – something the Conservatives have long been afraid of, and are pressing for the hasty destruction of data to impede. And the way she characterises this is genuinely frightening – that they are backdating changes to the law to make something legal after a finding of wrongdoing. She uses the example of the Sponsorship Scandal – what if the Liberal government of the day retroactively changed the law so that the Auditor General was ousted from her jurisdiction after the fact. It’s unconscionable. What’s even more galling is the way that the prime minister is shrugging this off as just “fixing a loophole.” No, it’s not. It’s wilfully undermining the Commissioner and her ability to do her job, which this government has already made nearly impossible through starving her office budget and wanton disregard of their obligations under the Access to Information regime. All while they call themselves “open and transparent.” It’s grotesque, abusive, and in violation of their obligations as the government of the day. And if anything is any more upsetting about this situation, it’s that the opposition parties were too busy electioneering in QP instead of raising bloody hell about this issue – the Liberals not asking until nearly the end, and the NDP not raising it at all. Thanks for doing your jobs in holding this kind of unconscionable behaviour to account, MPs. Gold stars all around.

Good reads:

• The Supreme Court of Canada ruled from the bench yesterday, taking less than 30 minutes to smack down the government’s decision to imprison Omar Khadr as an adult.
• It was the last functional day of Supreme Court Justice Marshall Rothstein on the bench yesterday, and he got an impromptu farewell.
• The RCMP are facing charges under the Canada Labour Code as it relates to the training, equipment and supervision of those three Mounties who were shot in Moncton.
• There is speculation as to the legal repercussions once the Senate audit comes down.
• The RCMP are looking to hire about 30 new officers for their new Parliament Hill security force.
• Thousands of employees at CRA fell for a phishing scam, which was really just a test of their cyber-security that they were alerted to and still fell for.
• Don Martin rips into MPs for their zombie-like reliance on scripts. He’s right.

Odds and ends:

Here’s a Q&A with new Senate Speaker Leo Housakos.

More media organisations are trying to get in on the debates now that the Conservatives have rebuffed the broadcast consortium, while the consortium fights back.

A new Heritage Minute got released for Nursing Week.