Justin Trudeau fails yet another transparency test

© Dave Chan/AFP via Getty Images Prime Minister Justin Trudeau arrives to speak at a press conference in Ottawa on Jan. 11, 2020, regarding the downing of Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752.

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Four years ago, the Prime Minister’s Office announced something revolutionary: Justin Trudeau’s daily schedule would be public. The world would know what he was up to.

Well, not that revolutionary. The U.S. president’s daily itinerary is both a matter of public record, and quite detailed. But in Canada, a land of polite secrecy, it was a step in the right direction.

“Such an advisory, with the prime minister’s schedule, will be released daily — in the spirit of openness and transparency,” one press flack told the Huffington Post in 2016. The idea would be that “at least people know what their prime minister is doing, where he is and have a sense of his activities,” another told the Toronto Star.

Knowing what the prime minister is up to, from the meetings he holds with his own caucus, to the phone calls he makes to foreign leaders, to the briefings he gets from various officials and advisers — this is useful stuff to know.

During the recent escalation of tensions in the Middle East, journalists may have turned an eye to those itineraries to see who Trudeau was conferring with. Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Jonathan Vance? Chief of the Communications Security Establishment Shelly Bruce? Foreign Minister François-Philippe Champagne or Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan?

But anyone checking those itineraries would be left totally in the dark. On Jan. 4, the day after a U.S. drone strike killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the prime minister was on vacation in Costa Rica, so the schedule simply read “personal.” The day after, he was back in Ottawa, again, “personal.” By the 6th, a Monday, Trudeau spent all day in “private meetings.” Same for the day after. That evening, Iran fired a barrage of missiles at American military bases in Iraq, one of which housed Canadian troops. Hours later, Iran shot a Ukraine International Airlines jet out of the sky, killing 57 Canadian citizens and scores of others. The Wednesday itinerary has just one item: A 4 p.m. press conference. On the 9th, another press conference, and notice that the prime minister would join a candlelight vigil on Parliament Hill for the victims of the crash. © Blair Gable/Reuters Prime Minister Justin Trudeau attends a candlelight vigil for the victims of Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Jan. 9, 2020.

The prime minister, of course, was busy on those days. Check the Twitter feed of Adam Scotti, official photographer for the Prime Minister’s Office, and you’d learn that on Jan. 9, Trudeau had a closed-door meeting with Sajjan, Bruce and Vance, including others, that wasn’t in his itinerary.

Look back through the archive of Trudeau’s daily itineraries and it becomes pretty clear that this isn’t an actual schedule of the prime minister’s daily events, just a pale imitation of one.

Over the past 50 days (as of Tuesday Jan. 14), the prime minister’s itinerary details 15 meetings — all of which are with premiers, mayors and foreign leaders. There are 10 items of Parliamentary business, from question period to cabinet meetings. There are 12 media appearances and 11 public events. These schedules never list intelligence briefings, meetings with advisers, or phone calls with foreign leaders.

Plenty of days are perfectly opaque. There are 25 days listed only as “personal” — many of them include the prime minister’s Christmas vacation to Costa Rica. Then there are another seven days where the itinerary reads just “private meetings.”

There are a few days where the prime minister’s schedule is incredibly detailed, including every meeting, photo opportunity, even the check-in at his hotel. Those are only when the prime minister is abroad, however.

Much like the prime minister’s spinners told us four years ago, it would be mighty nice to get a sense of the prime minister’s daily activities when he’s in Canada. But to read his schedule now, you would be left with the impression that Trudeau rolls out of bed a little after noon, cleans up, takes a meeting with Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Dwight Ball, then heads home for some much-needed R&R. © Dave Chan/AFP via Getty Images Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Minister of National Defence Harjit Sajjan listen as Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Jonathan Vance addresses the media during a news conference in Ottawa on Jan. 8, 2020.

Obviously, some days, the prime minister is actually taking a personal day. And he deserves that. But when the prime minister’s public schedule lists just one or two items a day — if any — it can be hard to have faith that he’s actually doing anything.

This exercise in faux-transparency is emblematic of the government more broadly. Trudeau swore up-and-down that Canada’s access to information laws would be reformed to provide journalists and researchers with more power to obtain government documents, within reason, including within the prime minister’s office. He lied about that, unfortunately, and his emails are still out of reach from the public. The government is publishing more material by default, including mandate letters to cabinet and some scripts for question period, but those are essentially written to be press releases.

The entire point of transparency is that, yes, it is uncomfortable, but it is the right thing to do. If that isn’t cause enough for sitting governments, transparency has the knock-on effect of handcuffing future governments to the same standard. So as long as you believe yourself to be more morally upright than your likely successor, there’s some real electoral advantage to it. That was certainly Stephen Harper’s calculus when he brought in the Accountability Act in his first term.

Trudeau’s brand of accountability has been more performative than serious. If he wants to change that, actually telling the country what he does with his days would be a good start.

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/justin-ling-justin-trudeau-fails-yet-another-transparency-test