"Secrecy Serves to Entrench Incumbents"

Below is Excerpt 2 from a lecture given by renowned economist Joseph Stiglitz
On Liberty, the Right to Know, and Public Discourse:
The Role of Transparency in Public Life


I have already called attention to several of these adverse effects: Secrecy provides the fertile ground on which special interests work; secrecy serves to entrench incumbents, discourage public participation in democratic processes, and undermines the ability of the press to provide an effective check against the abuses of government. But the adverse effects are more pervasive.

To maintain secrecy, often the circle of those involved in decision making is greatly circumscribed; those who are able to provide valuable insights are cut out of the discussion. The quality of decision making is thereby weakened. There is, again, a vicious circle. With more mistakes, public officials become more defensive; to protect themselves, they seek even more secrecy, narrowing in the circle still further, eroding still further the quality of decision-making.

Public programs may be designed not on the basis of the impact that they have, but on (government officials’ beliefs about) the perceptions of those impacts. Those perceptions will be affected by the information that is publicly available; program design may be as sensitive to those perceptions (and the extent to which they can be controlled) as to their real impact.

There is still one more, related effect: as the space of informed discourse about a host of important issues gets circumscribed, attention gets focused more and more on value issues. It takes an enormous amount of information to make judgments concerning complex economic issues. It takes far less (or a far different kind of) information to come to a view concerning abortion or family values. Thus, secrecy has distorted the arena of politics. The adverse effects of secrecy are multiple: not only are important areas of public policy not dealt with effectively, but also debate focuses disproportionately on issues which are often far more divisive.

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Without a doubt the Dunderdale government will seek naturally divisive issues such as hating Ottawa or Quebec in order to avoid real debate on issues such as Muskrat Falls.

This government and it's Secrecy Act are very dangerous to the well-being of our society.