Prime Minister Trudeau's decision to make the usually confidential ministerial mandate letters public marked a new era of openness in Ottawa. Ministers were advised to follow an accompanying reference guide entitled Open and Accountable Government. Unfortunately, when I requested a copy from the Privy Council Office, I was told that it was not publicly available.It is hard to keep a straight face in these situations — a confidential guide on openness and accountability. So reminiscent of that famous Yes Minister episode when Sir Humphrey asks the cabinet secretary about the Campaign for Freedom of Information and receives the reply, “Sorry I can't talk about that.”But we probably shouldn't be too critical. The Privy Council Office assured me that the document would be “made public shortly.” It also has to be recognized that although openness is a laudable goal, it is far from a straightforward one.Take the federal Liberals' promise to extend the Access to Information Act to the offices of ministers and the prime minister. For years, critics have questioned the reasons why files, correspondence and email exchanges held by federal politicians and their staffs have been inaccessible under this Act.This questioning grew louder as emails from the office of former Prime Minister Stephen Harper, not normally accessible to the public, were presented as evidence in the Mike Duffy trial. To the shock of many, they revealed the extent to which PMO staff interfered in Senate operations.Removing these exemptions and allowing the sun to shine into the communications of our political class appears to be a slam-dunk for a new government anxious to demonstrate openness and transparency. But is it that simple?Based on my experience as a PMO staffer as well as the minister responsible for the Act in Ontario (where there is no exemption for political offices) during the so-called gas plants email deletion controversy, I can tell you that the proposal has its challenges.Federal politicians rarely publicly comment on the rationale for their offices being exempt. When the federal information commissioner challenged the exemption in the courts several years ago, government lawyers argued that ministers needed a “private space to allow for the full and frank discussion of issues,” where they could receive “confidential advice” including advice with “a political dimension.”Privately, politicians provide more fulsome reasons. Politics is a rough-and-tumble game that, at times, is nothing more than organized chaos. Politics is about survival and winning the next election. Politicians and their aides spend their days putting a political lens on a constant barrage of issues and events — often trying desperately to put the best light on very imperfect situations in the face of unceasing opposition and media attacks.Politics is about holding together a government made up of members and ministers with different views, abilities and talents. Interspersed with the demands of government is the need for politicians to engage in partisan activity by supporting their party, raising funds and at times shoring up a colleague in political trouble.Communication in this world is usually hurried, crass, gossipy and rarely properly thought through. It can easily be taken out of context to embarrass and undermine governments or give opponents an unfair advantage by giving them a glimpse into political strategies.So before we make all this communication available, should we not ask ourselves what we gain by opening it up? Will it result in the end of politics and partisan activities by politicians and their staffs? Will it put an end to spin and the cut and thrust of political survival? Will we no longer see political offices putting a realpolitik lens on issues? Will crazy ideas, often the first stepping-stones to finding real solutions, be banished?Or will we see the development of an oral culture within political offices? Will political discussions become the thing of telephone calls, personal email accounts and meetings without notes? Will enterprising staff spend hours trying to find a loophole in the Act that allows them to delete an email or document? Or worse, will they just go ahead and destroy them in the hope that no one will notice? In short, will the less heroic parts of government be driven even further underground?I am not arguing for the status quo. But someone needs to point out the obvious: The political world operates differently from the bureaucratic one. Before we lay it all open for everyone to see, maybe we need to better understand and define the appropriate role of political staff and their freedom to engage in activity that has partisan overtones. Maybe we need to create space for certain types of political discussions and activities that are outside of the Access to Information Act. Most importantly, in developing political reforms, maybe we should spend less time thinking about how the system should work and more time on how it actually does work.
John Milloy is a former Ontario cabinet minister who served as MPP for Kitchener Centre from 2003 to 2014. Prior to that, he worked on Parliament Hill, including five years in the office of Prime Minister Jean Chrétien. He is currently the Co-director of the Centre for Public Ethics and Assistant Professor of Public Ethics at Waterloo Lutheran Seminary, and the inaugural Practitioner in Residence in Wilfrid Laurier University's Political Science department. He is also a lecturer in the University of Waterloo's Master of Public Service Program. John can be reached at: [email protected] or follow him on twitter at: @John_Milloy.