This Day In Snookland...All Your Documents Are Us.

There'sNoFreedom
LikeBoughtFreedomVille


Bob Mackin, who the Snooklandians have apparently tried to shut out of the FOI process before, has an important post up at his (new and improved!) blog:

...Via Freedom of Information, I asked for the business case [for the Massey Tunnel replacement bridge], including cost estimates, and any reports recommending or authorizing preliminary communications, environmental, engineering and site preparation.

The government told me on Nov. 5 that it has 60 pages of records to satisfy my request. Excellent! But there’s a catch. The government wants me to pay $126. It claims it will require two hours to produce the records and a further two hours to prepare and handle disclosure of the records. (Translation: one or more people will work for four hours to read and decide how much information to censor and how little to show you and me.)...


So.

There you have it.

You want freedom?

You want information?

Well, you're gonna have to pay for it.

Which suggests, to me at least (and Mr. Mackin also, I believe), that the real agenda here is to price the little guy who wants to get to the bottom of things out of the game by charging exorbitant/punitive 'fees'.

And, if true, that really stinks.

Especially when you think about who actually owns said information.

OK?

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This latest round of Snooklandian codswallopinarianism brings into sharp relief how important it is that Sean Holman's Public Eye archive is up and running again.

Yay!

For those new to these here parts, Sean's old site is the absolute best public record anywhere of just about everything and anything that went down during Gordon Campbell's so-called 'Golden Era'.

Don't believe me?

Well....Go there and type, say, 'Patrick Kinsella' and 'BC Rail' into the search box.

Heckfire!

Nevermind...

I'll do it for you.


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Interestingly, somebody was haranguing me on the Email recently about a dead PEye link on a post I wrote awhile back...I told the guy to use the Google and/or give me a break...Why the latter?...Because the post was written in....Wait for it...2005....(Prem!)
In the 'credit where credit is due' dept......Kudos to Mike Klassen for bringing the PEye archive back to life.


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