It’s not about money, it’s about the nature of democracy
- Details
- Published on Friday, March 30, 2018
Ken Waddell
President of the Manitoba Community Newspapers Association
On Dec. 4, Cathy Cox, provincial minister of sport, heritage and recreation, tabled Bill 8, The Government Notices Modernization Act, for first reading in the Manitoba legislature. At first glance, the bill seems procedural, even innocuous. Its first part proposes that The Manitoba Gazette, the government’s official online portal for legal notices, be made available to the public free of charge. It then recommends amendments to 24 statutes relating to the government’s publication of official notices, removing requirements that such notices to be published in local newspapers and replacing them with the requirement or option of publishing them in The Manitoba Gazette.
But all is not what it seems at first glance.
The Manitoba Community Newspapers Association wants to make it perfectly clear that, by doing away with requirements to publish government notices in newspapers, the Progressive Conservative government of Premier Brian Pallister will make it even more difficult for Manitobans to monitor its activities and business.
Most importantly, this bill will affect the manner in which everyday Manitobans learn about things such as changes to school board boundaries or human rights complaints.
Let’s be honest here. The Manitoba Gazette is a little-known house organ that catalogues items of government business which must be legally published, such as notices to creditors of an estate or notices of legal name changes. It is generally only used by people in government or legal circles and it is genuinely difficult to find online, even when using the search window on the government’s own website.
Making something accessible does not necessarily mean people will use it, and making The Gazette free does not mean the public will visit the website. The whole point of a legal requirement to publish government notices is to ensure that such information is broadly distributed. The 49 member papers of the MCNA deliver hundreds of thousands of newspapers to the doors and mailboxes of Manitobans throughout the province each week. Our readers see those notices and thus learn of public hearings on flood prevention or the use of fertilizers and pesticides in nearby farmlands.
Bill 8 will effectively bury such notices in an internet backwater, while the government touts phrases such as “openness and ease of access.”
Not about money
It will likely be pointed out that MCNA’s member newspapers earn money from publishing public notices. Rest assured, the sum of that revenue is not significant enough to be make-or-break for our members.
This is not a money issue. It is a question of the openness of government and the nature of democracy.
Rather than reaching out directly to the people who may be affected by their notices, via a medium that is still very much useful and familiar, this government is content to wait for people to somehow discover what is happening by visiting a website they’ve never heard of.
The scenario rather begs the question: What other information would this government like to obscure?
