Political interference in access to information: the president of the CAI has been “mis-quoted”, argues Rita de Santis

News 17 August, 2017

Photo Simon Clark
The minister Rita de Santis believes that the president of the Commission of access to information (CAI) has been “misquoted” when he said to the Duty that it was natural that some of the answers to the requests for access to information are “protected” in “political interest”.

Pascal Dugas Drone

Thursday, 17 August, 2017 10:31

UPDATE
Thursday, 17 August, 2017 10:42

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The minister Rita de Santis believes that the president of the Commission of access to information (CAI) has been “misquoted” when he said to the Duty that it was natural that some of the answers to the requests for access to information are “protected” in “political interest”.

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“As soon as we became aware of the article, our chief of staff called [the president of the CAI, John Chartier, and he told us that he had been misquoted”, she indicated to the QMI Agency, Thursday.

“It confirmed to us that the commission has never found any political interference in a folder, that there was no evidence of interference,” she added.

However, in The line of Duty, Mr. Chartier had expressed a different reality.

“You can’t make abstraction of the political, according to us. One cannot make abstraction of the character hot a file policy when a request comes”, one can read in the montreal daily.

These questions on the possible implications for policy in the access requests to the information hold attention in the last few weeks, while a number of irregularities on the transmission of information have been recorded by journalists from the Journal de Québec.

Last may, an employee of the department of Justice had sent to our Bureau of investigation in an e-mail in error, indicating that members of the cabinet of the minister of Justice had to approve the responses sent to requests for access to information to the media.