Pretty much the most stinging criticism that could be hurled at the Trudeau government would be that it has a worse record on openness and transparency than the Harper Conservatives.
After all, the Harper government extended its need for message control to the point of gagging federal scientists. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, on the other hand, sold himself in the 2015 election as a modern leader who would part the clouds of government secrecy and let in the light.
So it's disappointing to learn that a recent audit finds the federal government's response times for access to information requests have dropped, significantly, since Mr. Trudeau came to power.
News Media Canada, an advocacy group representing Canada's media outlets, found that only 27 per cent of the requests for information it sent to various federal departments this year were answered within the prescribed 30 days.
That compares poorly to 2014, the last full year of the Harper government, when the federal government responded within 30 days 41 per cent of the time.
The methodology of News Media Canada's annual audit is by no means in-depth, but it serves as an accurate snapshot of the moment. And it reinforces the impression that the Trudeau government is not living up to its campaign promises to improve on the past, most notably by updating the 32-year-old Access to Information Act.
The government's proposed reform, Bill C-58, falls short in so many areas that the federal information commissioner, Suzanne Legault, said Wednesday that its passage would "result in a regression of existing rights."
The bill, which passed second reading this week, continues to exempt the Prime Minister's Office and cabinet ministers' offices from access requests. It will make it more complicated for Canadians to make information requests by demanding a degree of detail that might be impossible to provide. And it grants bureaucrats more grounds to deny information, including the right to turn down a request if it would take too much work to complete.
And that isn't even a comprehesive list of the bill's failings. Mr. Trudeau promised sunny ways, but his legislation will keep Canadians in the dark.