From the Most "Transparent" Government In the Country's History

All liars and traitors.

They have no place in the country:

Two days after publishing an alarming report on foreign interference in Canada, an intelligence agency oversight committee says the federal government is trying to avoid disclosing information by “inappropriately” withholding over a thousand documents.

In its annual report published Wednesday, the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) said that it is still fighting the Liberal government to obtain all the documents it requires to fulfill its mandate as an intelligence agency watchdog.

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The committee noted that despite being granted access to four documents covered by Cabinet confidence last year as part of its review of foreign interference in Canada, it was blocked from accessing hundreds of others.

“Federal departments and agencies withheld or refused the disclosure of over a thousand documents, in whole or in part, on the basis that they were Cabinet confidences. Specifically, close to a quarter of these documents were withheld in their entirety,” the committee wrote.

“The Committee is concerned that some departments and agencies may be inappropriately using claims of Cabinet confidences to avoid disclosing information to the Committee,” the report continues.

It was not immediately clear if those unreleased documents were requested as part of the committee’s review into foreign interference against Canadian democratic institutions.

Documents that contain cabinet confidences — information that is discussed at the cabinet table — are normally prevented from disclosure so as to allow ministers to “express their views freely during the discussions held in Cabinet.”

But NSICOP has complained since 2022 that the government continues to withhold information it requires due to cabinet confidence and has called on the Liberals to redefine the principle.

“While a legislative change to the definition of Cabinet confidence is desirable, in the near term, a clear statement of policy that NSICOP should be barred from receiving only core Cabinet secrets would go some way to addressing the issues being experienced,” the committee wrote.

“It goes without saying that it is essential for the Committee to have comprehensive access to all the information it needs to fulfill its statutory responsibility of conducting reviews and making relevant recommendations to enhance the effectiveness of the security and intelligence community,” the committee wrote.

In a shocking report published Monday, NSICOP stated that some MPs are “wittingly or semi-wittingly” helping foreign governments all the while confirming previous reports about foreign interference in Canadian elections.

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Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault’s office sent extensive amounts of data about the federal carbon pricing’s economic impacts to the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO), with an explicit directive for it to be used for “internal purposes only.”

The letter sent on May 14, which is available on the PBO’s website, shows that Deputy Minister Jean-François Tremblay responded to a query from the budget watchdog’s office on April 30 requesting additional information to update its analysis of the measure.

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The PBO said that it would update its reports in the fall after a modelling error mistakenly calculated not only consumer carbon pricing but also industrial pricing.

Tremblay attached an Excel spreadsheet containing the impact of carbon pricing on national and provincial gross domestic product, as well as its economic impacts in each province and territory and for Canada as a whole for the period 2022 to 2030.

“The data the Department is providing contains unpublished information. As such, I request you to ensure that this information is used for your office’s internal purposes only and is not published or further distributed,” reads the letter.

A source who was privy to the information contained in that spreadsheet said that Environment Canada’s data is consistent with the PBO’s prior analysis, which showed that the carbon tax has a negative impact on the Canadian economy.