Public and private interests a balancing act, province says after receiving Code of Silence Award

The Saskatchewan Ministry of Highways and Infrastructure says a balancemust be considered when releasing government documents to the public after it received theCode of Silence Award for Outstanding Government Secrecy.

The "distinction," handed outannually by various groups of journalists including the Canadian Association of Journalists, is intended to highlight "government departments and agencies that put extra effort into denying public access to government information to which the public has a right under access to information legislation."

"We acknowledge our obligation to be transparent. At the same time, we also have an obligation to protect landowners' private information," Doug Wakabayashi, the ministry's executive director of communications, said in an email.

"It's about balancing the public's right to information while also protecting the private information of individuals."

The ministry has received multiple requests for informationsince2016 when CBC Saskatchewan first began reporting on Global Transportation Hub land deals.

We try to be transparent as possible.- Doug Wakabayashi, Ministry of Highways

During that time, access to information requests have either resulted in heavily redacted documents or a processing cost of more than $180,000 for the paperwork and emails related to inquiries made by CBCinvestigative reporter Geoff Leo.

"We try to be transparent as possible,"Wakabayashi said, adding the province has received more than 100 requests from various news outlets about the land transactions, which have yielded about 5,000 pages of documents in response.

CBC's requests alone account for more 1,000 pages of those documents.

Confused about the GTH land deal? Here's a short explainer video

8 years ago

Duration 8:39

In 2015, CBC Saskatchewan's iTeam started looking into a transaction between the Global Transportation Hub and a Regina developer. This video is a summary of what CBC has learned since then.

The Canadian Association of Journalists' news release highlights multiple reports made by the province's Information and Privacy Commissioner, Ron Kruzeniski.

The province said it has taken Kruzeniski'srecommendations into account and is taking all of them into consideration.

Other Code of Silence award recipients for 2017 include the Treasury Board of Canadain the federal category, Toronto Hydroin the local category and the RCMP in the law enforcement category.