Tagged: Dan O’Connor
The continuing education of Christine McCulloch, among others
Early last month, Contrarian revealed that Nova Scotia’s Chief Electoral Officer had deliberately made her latest report of political donations harder to use by publishing them in an image-based PDF format whose text could neither be searched nor copied and pasted into another document.
With help from hacker-readers, Contrarian republished the data in the searchable, text-grab-friendly format McCulloch used for previous years’ reports.
I’m not done with this topic. Several generous readers have converted the open PDF file we published into an Excel database file, thus enabling much broader use of the interesting political data it contains.
I will post that Excel CSV file soon, along with a challenge to encourage innovative projects that might help Nova Scotia officials, and even McCulloch herself, grasp the democratic potential they could unleash by giving citizens fuller access to data their taxes paid to gather.
McCulloch contended that crippling the campaign disclosure report was necessary “to protect contributors from ‘data-mining.’”
Dan O'Connor hated PDFs
It turns out the Appeal Court of Nova Scotia has already adjudicated this issue in a case called O’Connor v. Nova Scotia, in which the court upheld a citizen’s right to obtain data in its original format (a Microsoft Access database file in this case).
The O’Connor in question is one Dan O’Connor, then chief of staff to a series of NDP leaders, now chief of staff to Premier Darrell Dexter. His lawyer was Graham Steele, now Minister of Finance.
The format issue was one of several considered by the courts. The trial judge had, at O’Connor’s request, ordered release of the documents in the original Access database format, instead of the flat, McCulloch-style PDF offered by the province. The Appeal Court upheld the order for release in Access database format, but went out of its way to avoid making this requirement a precedent. Mr. Justice Jamie Saunders, wrote the unanimous decision [my emphasis]:
[119] The [province] complains that by, in effect, ordering the government to provide the information to Mr. O’Connor in the Access format, the chambers judge exceeded his jurisdiction and set a dangerous precedent.
[120] Technically the [province] is right. There is no authority in the FOIPOP Act enabling the judge to do what he purported to do when he said:
…it only makes sense to provide all the relevant information in Access format, and I so order.
[121] However, it is hard to fault the chambers judge’s directions. The Access format had already been prepared by government. In other words it was “on the shelf” and immediately available to the respondent at no additional effort, expense, or inconvenience to the government. In those circumstances, it seems to me to be perfectly reasonable for the chambers judge to have given the direction he did. This ought not to be taken as establishing an unwarranted or unnecessary precedent. As the chambers judge himself recognized in the very next line of his judgment:
By doing so I am not saying that all FOIPOP Act applicants shall have their choice of formats. This aspect of my ruling is specific to the facts of this case.
A former Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act administrator offers the following thought:
Governments do worry, legitimately, about releasing information that can be turned into solicitation lists.* With today’s technology, it is a snap to convert any list that combines names and addresses and/or telephone numbers into a mailing list or a phone list.
Section 20(3)(i) of the FOIPOP Act says that the release of personal information is presumed to be an unreasonable invasion of privacy (and hence prohibited) where “the personal information consists of the third party’s name together with the third party’s address or telephone number and is to be used for mailing lists or solicitations by telephone or other means.”
This is a very curious provision, because it is the only section in the FOIPOP Act, of which I am aware, that prohibits disclosure based on the applicant’s intended use. For all other purposes, the applicant’s intended use is irrelevant.
Section 20(3)(i) poses a real conundrum for government. How is government to judge what the applicant’s purpose is? What if the applicant doesn’t tell the truth? What if the applicant changes its mind? What if the original applicant doesn’t want it for a mailing list, but passes it on to someone else who does?
In the end, what the government tends to do is ask “Could this be used for a mailing list?” And if the answer is “yes,” they tend not to release it.
Graham Steele hated PDFs
Contrarian doesn’t know what’s in the mind of provincial officials, but this has the ring of truth. In effect, the possibility that personal data could be converted to solicitation lists is trumping other considerations. That outcome was clearly not the legislative intent, which applied the exemption only to cases where the data is to be used for solicitation, etc.
In any case, it’s not even clear the FOIPOP Act applies to McCulloch. She reports not to government but to the legislature. It’s not clear her office fits the definition of a public body under the FOIPOP act.
What would be helpful here is a much deeper understanding on the part of provincial officials as to the commonweal-affirming potential of the open-data movement that is sweeping progressive jurisdictions throughout the world, producing a new universe of citizen-empowering, economy-building tools. With its substantial cohort of tech workers, Nova Scotia ought to be at the forefront of this movement.
Contrarian is hatching plans to use our restored and enhanced version of McCulloch’s artificially crippled data as an illustrative example. Stay tuned.
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* I say this worry is vastly overblown. Conversion to solicitation lists happens less often than fear-mongers suppose. The risk of harm is almost always low. The potential benefits of open data are great.
The Herald’s misreporting – ctd.
Sharon Fraser is a Halifax journalist, women’s rights advocate, and the wife of Dan O’Connor, the chief of staff to Premier Dexter embroiled in a controversy over inaccurate reporting by the Chronicle-Herald over the weekend. She describes the events at the heart of the Herald’s misreporting:
I have no desire to keep this going eternally but I wrote this summary this morning and thought you might be interested.
Here’s what happened:
On Friday, the Herald published a front-page story reducing an important government initiative and its announcement to the amount of money that was spent over several months in its preparation. The headline — the government announcement was about wind-power and other forms of renewable electricity — was “Blowing money.” The headline and lead stated that the cost of the announcement included the cost of preparing the new five year renewable electricity policy.
There were other inaccuracies in the story and its whole premise was based on the Herald’s contention that the government was squandering taxpayers’ money.
Dan wrote a comment to the Herald online forum, strongly criticizing the story, its inaccuracies and the fact that Opposition Leader Stephen MacNeil had been called for a comment for the story but no government representative had been called.
At this point, the Herald had choices: It could have said, “we stand by our story,” and published Dan’s comment. Or, as it seems to know who its anonymous commenters are, it could have called Dan (or another government representative) and interviewed him about the alleged inaccuracies and do a follow-up story about the government’s position on the story — and on the original event.
The Herald didn’t make either of those choices. Instead, using the same reporter who had done the original story, it went after Dan, ultimately smearing his reputation by falsely claiming he had twice “denied” writing the comments, then writing that he had “confessed” after “repeated questions.”
I was standing right beside him during the phone calls. The reporter called him twice. In the first call, she asked him if he had sent an email to the paper that day. He said no. She called him back, very shortly after, and said she had asked the wrong question. She then asked if he had sent comments to the online forum. He said he had. There were no denials, no repeated questions, no “confession.”
On Saturday, the Herald filled much of its front page with a story (and full-length photo) — centred on the fact that Dan had submitted anonymous comments to the online forum and the fabrication that he had lied about it. His comments, which they had refused to post on Friday, were on Saturday’s front page. Well into the story, the Herald reported the government’s objections to the inaccuracies in the original story, and the first comments from a government representative about the previous day’s front page story. (In conversations with several government representatives, the Herald never denied fundamental errors in the original story, but refused to correct them, refused to apologize, and said they “stood by” the various editorial staff who decided to write, edit and present the Friday story.)
On Saturday, I sent a comment to the online forum under my own name, disputing their version of events and accusing them of fabricating what they had written about Dan. My comment was not published and within a short period of time, the story was closed to further comments.
On Monday, the Herald ran an editorial that was presented as a defense of the original story without ever ever repeating its premise or endorsing its errors. The editorial added information that changed the topic from the renewable electricity announcement to the use of consultants — which had not been the subject of a Herald news story or news gathering. The editorial said not a word about the earlier inaccuracies or the failure to offer the government a chance to participate in the story and concluded by suggesting the government should simply send out press releases when it wants to make an announcement.
That NDP news conference – ctd.
Martin MacKinnon writes:
I am appalled by these NDP apologists — I do hope they’re getting paid — on the $42,000* press release. Regardless if some of the $42K should not have been included, it did include funding for things like buses and “marketing consultants.” If this was a Rodney MacDonald Tory event, I am sure these people would have also pointed out that the $42K was overstated. These NDP’er’s are double hypocrites. One because they are governing like Tories (John Buchanan should be proud) and because they told their party members they would govern differently. Shame on them.
*The $42,000 is overstated, a concoction of the Chronicle-Herald that mixes $11,000 in announcement expenses with $31,000 in expenses related to producing an electricity plan, and pretends they are all news conference costs. The Herald repeats this misrepresentation for a third time in today’s edition, along with the false claim that Dan O’Connor twice denied posting a comment to the Herald’s website.
This double misrepresentation of the story, repeated three days running despite clear contrary evidence, is a blatant display of dishonesty. Apparently, the Herald prefers to misinform its readers and defame others rather than acknowledge its error.
An early test for the NDP government
Is Peter MacKay channelling John Buchanan? Is Stephen Harper keen to cultivate a second Danny Williams in Atlantic Canada?
Those are two possible explanations of the Harper Government’s mean-spirited, post-election reversal of its commitment to help fund the $40-million, four-rink arena planned for Bedford.
The Conservative about-face presents an early test for Darrell Dexter’s Government.
Last month, the feds assured HRM officials that the project was on track to receive $15 million in infrastructure funding from Ottawa’s stimulus program. The NDP Government likewise committed $15 million, and HRM was to finance the remainder. Last Friday, Ottawa abruptly informed city hall it no longer considered the project eligible under the infrastructure program. [See: AllNovaScotia.com — subscription only.]
Coming hot on the heels of the Harper Government’s lopsided rejection of paving projects in non-Tory Nova Scotia ridings, the reversal smacks of political punishment. South End Councilor Sue Uteck drew a direct line between the sudden federal disavowal and the June 9 election of and NDP government—including former Conservative cabinet minister Len Goucher’s defeat at the hands of Liberal Kelly Regan. Regan is married to Liberal MP Geough Regan.
Insiders say Dan O’Connor, Dexter’s chief of staff, has taken pains to cultivate a working relationship with MacKay chief of staff John MacDonnell. Whether those efforts are sufficient to give MacKay second thoughts about this latest bit of federal Conservative pettiness may foreshadow the state of Canada-Nova Scotia relations for the duration of the Harper government.
