Info chill vexes journalist

By Austin Grabish, The Selkirk Record

A provincial law that bans the publishing of information relating to government programs and services during an election has left an information chill across the province.

For journalists simply trying to do their jobs, it’s frustrating.

A byelection in The Pas is preventing government officials from giving out routine information requested by the media, and not just information in The Pas, but anywhere in the province.

The Interlake-Eastern Regional Health Authority turned down two requests for information from the Selkirk Record last week, and the province also turned down a request for comment.

Each time the wonderful Elections Financing Act was cited.

The Act has a clause that says a government department or Crown agency must not advertise or publish any information about its programs or activities in the 90 days leading up to an election.

The language is vague and leaves officials left to interpret what an activity or program is, and that’s problematic because it gives government spin masters the simple ability to cite the Act when refusing comment.

To put this into perspective, the Record had asked the RHA to comment on a 2013 lawsuit it was faced with from PCL Constructors.

The company was the successful bidder on the new $111 million Selkirk hospital construction project, but was later dumped by the RHA due to an opportunity for “significant and efficient change to the project”.

PCL sued and alleged the actual reason for the cancellation of the tender was due to a complaint by an unsuccessful bidder.

The dispute was later settled out of court, and both RHA officials and the province refuse to comment on the settlement, because of the Elections Financing Act of course.

The second request last week made by the Record related to the RHA’s plan to implement recommendations from the Brian Sinclair inquiry.

Sinclair, 45, was a wheelchair-bound aboriginal man who died in the emergency room at Health Sciences Centre in Winnipeg after sitting unattended for 34 hours.

Recommendations from the inquest into his death are to be applied at ERs across the province including Selkirk’s ER, which is mentioned in a report released last month by the province.

But both of the Record’s requests were denied despite the fact they had nothing to do with the byelection in The Pas. For journalists, and taxpayers, the 90-day vacation from communicating with the public is ludicrous.

The province has received a bit of a spanking from Manitoba’s election commissioner on two separate occasions in the past.

The first slap came in 2012 after Commissioner of Elections Bill Bowles found former Health Minister Theresa Oswald in violation of the Act for taking media on a tour of a new birthing centre in Winnipeg during the 2011 provincial election.

The provincial NDP was slapped a second time in 2014 for promoting an event that celebrated the 98^th anniversary of women’s suffrage and Nellie McClung the year prior.

Both slaps were the result of complaints made by the Opposition Progressive Conservatives.

But Opposition house leader Kelvin Goertzen made a valid point in a phone interview Friday when he said it was the Commissioner who found fault with the government and not the PCs.

“We don’t make the decision if they’ve broken the law, an independent commissioner does,” Goertzen said.

Goertzen added it was the NDP who made the legislation and it’s hard to disagree with him when he says, “It’s a little strange that they don’t seem to know the rules.”

“It’s actually their law.”

And it will be the NDP who gets to decide what information reporters do and do not get over the next month.

The public deserves a response on the lawsuit and the Sinclair inquiry implementations, regardless of a byelection in the northern part of the province. If there’s public outrage to either – or anything the government has done – it’s fair game, election or not. A byelection shouldn’t be used as another opportunity for elected officials to hide from taking responsibility for their actions.

The information chill is expected to last until April 21.

--Austin Grabish is a reporter with the Selkirk Record and its sister paper the Express Weekly News. Find him on Twitter @AustinGrabish

 -- First published in the Selkirk Record print edition April 2 2015 p.9