🇨🇦 DND Stonewalled Legal Records Requests for Years — McGuinty Told to Clean It Up

Parliament's Information Commissioner Caroline Maynard has ordered the Department of National Defence to release records it had been sitting on following requests from Global News, and has formally urged Defence Minister David McGuinty to make structural changes inside DND, as found in her investigation. Her characterization: completely unacceptable. That phrasing from an officer of Parliament is not routine bureaucratic language. It is a finding that a federal department systematically ignored its legal obligations under access to information law.

This is the defence ministry — the institution responsible for sovereignty, national security, and Arctic readiness — openly defying transparency requirements while Canada debates its military commitments to NATO and its ability to defend its own territory. McGuinty, who replaced the scandal-soaked Anita Anand, now inherits a department that treats public accountability as optional. The Liberals spent years lecturing Canadians about democratic norms. Their own defence department apparently never got the memo, and felt comfortable enough ignoring it for long enough to trigger a Commissioner's investigation.

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