Pease in a pod (V)

Rob Antle, The Telegram, January 10, 2009:

[T]he Department of Transportation and Works would only provide the audit team with a printout of highway contract work, not a computer file. Government officials contended the information “does not exist in electronic form within this department” –even though the record released was a computer printout that included a “print date.” The law allows public access to paper and electronic files.

Canadian Press, today:

The Harper government has dumped three boxloads of information about its efforts to stimulate Canada’s sputtering economy on Parliament’s independent budget watchdog.

Kevin Page had asked for more information, complaining that the sketchy data provided up to now made it impossible to tell whether $12 billion in stimulus spending is having any impact on the economy.

But rather than provide an easy-to-analyse spreadsheet listing infrastructure projects and how much money has been spent on each of them to date, the government flooded Page Thursday with 4,476 pages of documents.

“The parliamentary budget officer has asked for a significant amount of information. We’ve given him a significant amount of information,” Baird said.