An ugly truth revisited


 Posted on September 11th, 2013 –

My earlier assertion that there’s little, if anything, to hold politicians to account when they or their office break the law, has been re-affirmed by some very stark statements made by the City of Toronto’s Strategic Communication Director, Jackie DeSouza:

“It is the honour system; a lot of this is based on trust.”

…

An issue has arisen over emails, sent or received, that in the normal course of business are deleted. Those emails reside on the city’s server and can be restored, but DeSouza said it is up to the mayor’s staff to go looking for them.

In other words, even though there are very clear laws about how Freedom of Information requests are to be handled, ultimately it doesn’t matter a smidge if either Rob Ford or any of his unelected staff (not that that should make a difference) decide that it doesn’t.

Ford has not responded to interview requests on the issue, but on Sunday he slammed the media for requesting documents from his office “almost to a point of harassment.”

“For what? For what? What are they looking for? There’s nothing there,” the mayor said on his radio show during a chat with co-host Councillor Doug Ford, who then accused the Star and other media of “Pravda journalism.”

I’m not sure what “Pravda journalism” is supposed to be, but I do know that the word “pravda” is the Russian word (and a couple of other languages), for truth.

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