OTTAWA — The government is asking the Federal Court of Appeal to quash an order for the release of documents about four senators at the heart of the 2013 Senate spending scandal. Both sides believe a Federal Court judge erred in his analysis of how federal officials decided to withhold more than two dozen pages of internal documents and his subsequent decision to release parts of the documents. Sean Holman, an expert on the access to information regime, said the arguments in the case show the divide over the transparency law before Parliament. In August 2013, The Canadian Press filed an access to information request to the Privy Council Office for any records created since March about the four senators. Officials refused to release 27 of 28 relevant pages, providing only what O’Reilly described as “innocuous information” like letterhead, signatures, dates and names.

Source: National Post November 02, 2017 16:01 UTC