Public notices a fundamental part of the democratic process

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 23/03/2018 (2474 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Manitoba government has proposed ending a centuries-old practice of governments being required to advertise when they are about to do something that affects the property, rights and lives of their citizens.

If passed, legislation now before the Manitoba legislature would allow human rights hearings to be held, development projects with exceptional environmental issues to be considered, highway uses and access to be changed, school board boundaries to be altered and the proceeds of crime to be sold and many other activities — all without the need to provide public notice anywhere but on a government website.

The bill, formally known as the Government Notices Modernization Act, has received little attention in a legislative session dominated by such matters as deficit reduction and rules for legalized marijuana.

But it represents a major change in the way governments in Manitoba provide information to the public and gives governments the option of not using independent media to tell citizens what they are doing.

It replaces the requirement that democratic governments use independent media to alert the public of government activities that may cause citizens to take action with the requirement that such matters merely be made available on a government website.

The Progressive Conservatives have touted the changes as simply catching up with the times — making all information digital and available at no charge. It is the so-called democratization of information.

But it is nothing of the sort.

The Manitoba Gazette, the official government record of matters that are legally required to be published, will be free and online from now on.

However, the legislation goes much further than simply digitizing the Manitoba Gazette. It mostly eliminates the need to put legally required public notices anywhere else.

Government will still have the option of placing public notices in external media, but will not be required to do so.

The Manitoba Gazette is unknown to most Manitobans, but they will now be expected to consult it regularly to discover if, say, a body of water near them is about to be designated as protected, meaning they can no longer fish or swim there.

The bill ends a tradition dating back to 1665 in England, a practice that has become a hallmark of democratic governments. It has been in place in the United States since the American Revolution and in various jurisdictions in Canada since Confederation 150 years ago.

Typically, public notices must be placed in newspapers, but the purpose was never to support newspapers or pay for journalists.

The real purpose is to display information in places where the public is likely to notice it. Providing public notice provides the opportunity for the public to influence governing bodies and allows the public to be actively participate in a democratic society.

Typically, true public notices have certain characteristics:

● Certain defined matters must be published as public notices. This is not optional. A government cannot pick and choose when it will publish a public notice.

● Public notices must be published by an independent third party in a forum independent of the government. This has typically been a newspaper, but some Manitoba statutes include radio and other media.

● Public notices must be archived in a secure and publicly available format.

● Public notices must be capable of being accessed by all segments of society.

● The public must be able to verify that a public notice was not altered once published.

The Manitoba Gazette meets some of these tests, but it fails on the critical matter of independence. True public notice cannot be provided by a publication controlled by government.

That is because some governments may simply not want to advertise what they are doing.

The legislation would eliminate newspaper notices under the Environment Act. Even if a proposed development is of such magnitude to be considered exceptional with a number of environment issues, there would be no need to notify the public “through advertisements in the local newspaper or radio of the proposal and provide opportunity for comments and objections.”

The education minister, who has the power to change school division boundaries and even amalgamate two or more school divisions, currently must hold hearings before doing so and provide notice of the hearings in a local newspaper. The proposed bill would still allow for such newspaper notification, but only require such notice to be published in the Manitoba Gazette.

This concept is also being incorporated into other legislation.

Currently, notice of hearings under the Planning Act, which typically involve changes to how land can be used, must be published in a local newspaper at least twice during the 40-day period before the hearings take place. Proposed changes to the act would allow a planning district or municipality simply to put notice on their websites for 27 days before the hearing.

The list goes on. The bottom line is that there is a big difference between government being required to make certain matters public in independent media and government placing information on its own websites. The first option supports democracy. The second one, proposed in this legislation, opens the door to governments abusing democracy.

Bob Cox is publisher of the Winnipeg Free Press and chairman of News Media Canada.