PMO considering merger of Information and Privacy Commissioner Offices

Ignoring an almost unanimous vote by MPs to extend the current Information Commissioner's term by one year, the Prime Minister has extended it by a mere 90 days in order to revisit an old idea of merging the offices of the federal Information and Privacy Commissioners, according to access to information expert Ken Rubin. In a column, Rubin argues: "the merger of the two offices would water down and overload a super information/privacy czar...The losers...will be those who want something done versus the government's increasing intrusive powers on the privacy side and the escalating secretive ways on the access side." The Hill Times article by Ken Rubin, July 11, 2005