Shall we gather in the bunker

Someone needs a refresher course on their 30 days or its free policy. To wit:

"A Progressive Conservative government will ... release to the public every government-commissioned report within 30 days of receiving it, indicate the action government will take on a report's recommendations within 60 days, and ensure prompt public access to all government reports in hard copy and on the Internet"

On Wednesday, Joan Burke, fresh from doing a stellar ministerial job at the Departmint of Ejukashun, released the Clinical Services Review.

The date on the report itself? December 2008.

That means that the report was released somewhere between 133 and 164 days after it was in the hands of government.

That means that, yet again, The Most Open And Accountable Government In The History Of Ever broke its own election promise on openness and accountability, without batting an eyelash.

(And lookie! The report is released in a locked-down PDF format that you, the people who paid for it, aren't allowed to copy. Score negative two for openness and transparency.)

It must be yet another one of those increasingly frequent special cases that the talented Elizabeth Matthews alluded to last year:

"There are instances when that deadline simply cannot be met due to a variety of issues," Elizabeth Matthews, a spokeswoman for Premier Danny Williams, said Monday.

Instant update: "I will not gloss things over", says the Minister.

The Minister who sat on the report, that she now plans to not "gloss over", for five months?

Yip. That Minister.

So when she says "I will not gloss things over", the self-imposed proscription against over-glossing must be prospective, or, as the cool kids say these days, "on a go-forward basis."