More Paternalism from Harper & Co.

Apparently the Harper government thinks that the spending of our tax dollars is none of our business. While DND has routinely released figures on the cost of the Afghanistan deployment in the past, they are unwilling to for the coming two years, until the end of the mission in 2011. Could this be because we are deferring to the Americans, who have increased their presence in Kandahar? Thus

When the NDP asked for the identical figures last year, the military made them public. [It] was able to disclose in April 2008 that the yearly incremental cost of the Afghan war would top $1-billion for the first time since Canada’s military became involved in Afghanistan in 2002.

But this year, military censors cited Section 15 of the act in blocking out the figure.

In a June 3 letter to an NDP researcher, Julie Jansen, the director of the military’s access branch, cited “the defence of Canada or any state allied” (italics mine) with it in justifying the withholding of the figures for the three next fiscal years.

Section 15 of the act allows the withholding of any “information the disclosure of which could reasonably be expected to be injurious to the conduct of international affairs, the defence of Canada or any state allied or associated with Canada or the detection, prevention or suppression of subversive or hostile activities.”

Ms. Jansen also invoked a Section 21 exemption, which gives a government department the discretionary power to disclose records that include negotiationplans, deliberations or consultations, or “administrative plans that have not yet been put into operation.”

In an identical request last year, the Defence Department released the estimates for the fiscal years leading up to 2011, the year that Parliament and the government has said Canada’s current military mission in Afghanistan must end.

“In the face of more public interest in the ongoing cost of the war, it is surprising the DND would now take the attitude that now is the time that we will start pulling back on information and not be as transparent as before,” NDP defence critic Jack Harris said.

So does this government just not care about accountability to Parliament, or is it letting the U.S. dictate the parameters of our democracy?