The Privy Council Office declined to provide more information about the 94, including how many may have worked in former prime minister Stephen Harper’s office.<\/p>\n
“Further disclosure of information could lead to security risks, potentially placing Canadians at risk,” spokesperson Paul\u00a0Duchesne\u00a0said in an\u00a0email.<\/p>\n
The briefing note for the clerk indicates the Privy Council Office\u00a0expects to add about 30 individuals each year to the ranks of “persons permanently bound to secrecy.”<\/p>\n
A separate group of more than 200 Canadian military personnel and federal workers have also been hit with lifetime gag orders since early last year. These individuals all work in the controversial program to replace Canada’s fighter jets.<\/p>\n
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After a formal question submitted in the House of Commons by Conservative MP James Bezan, the government acknowledged more than 200 public servants have been gagged for life regarding their work in procuring new fighter jets. (Adrian Wyld\/Canadian Press)<\/p>\n
The number was elicited by Conservative defence critic James\u00a0Bezan through a formal House of Commons procedure that requires a minister to answer an MP’s question.\u00a0Insiders called the gag orders an extraordinary and unnecessary measure.<\/a><\/p>\n Of the 235 staffers disclosed to Bezan, 121 work for National Defence and 13 work for the Privy Council Office. It’s not clear whether any of the 13 at Privy Council are also counted in the clerk’s memo.<\/p>\n In total, these most recent reports add at least another 361 public servants who risk up to 14 years in prison if they ever discuss the secrets of their time in government, whether in memoirs or at family reunions.<\/p>\n Security and intelligence historian Wesley Wark says the gagging system under the Security of Information Act of 2001 is unworkable and poorly conceived.<\/p>\n It “rests on an idea that there is such a thing as a permanent or eternal secret,” the University of Ottawa professor said. “This is clearly a myth and an unhelpful one.”<\/p>\n Wesley Wark, a security and intelligence historian at the University of Ottawa, says the gag provisions of the Security of Information Act are outdated and rob Canadians of their history.<\/p>\n He says the concept “robs Canada of an ability to learn from the experience of officials with a deep knowledge of security and intelligence issues” and “creates a chill around the publication of memoirs and other forms of organized memory and commentary.”<\/p>\n “It is a very old-fashioned system, rooted in long-ago British practice and has not been updated.”<\/p>\n Wark\u00a0says the law needs to be rewritten to ensure the gag provisions apply only to select categories of highly sensitive intelligence, among other reforms.<\/p>\n But Duchesne of the PCO says there are no plans to change the system.<\/p>\n “Designation of PMO and PCO employees will continue, as required in the interests of security,” he said. “Both PCO and PMO take the protection of information very seriously, which is why both ensure that those who have access to special operational information are permanently bound to secrecy.”<\/p>\n On May 11, historians and their supporters launched a\u00a0petition<\/a>\u00a0to the federal government, calling for millions of documents that have spent decades in departmental filing cabinets\u00a0to be turned over to Library and Archives Canada.<\/p>\n The petition’s initiator, Dennis\u00a0Molinaro\u00a0of Trent University,\u00a0told CBC News<\/a>\u00a0“the government seems to be, in essence, running some kind of secret or shadow archive.”<\/p>\nMyth of the ‘eternal secret’<\/h2>\n
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