PRESS RELEASE: Pirate Party Call For Real-Time Disclosure Of Government Spending

10.03.2014

Fox Creek, AB – March 9th

On Thursday the Prime Ministers Office gave its official replies to questions submitted by MPs regarding salary disclosure of staffers within the PMO making between $150,000 and $300,000 annually. Additionally, other government officials responded to Order Papers related to their departments, including an inquiry about software running on government computers. The PMO and government officials were less than forthcoming with information, aptly demonstrating the problem with relying on them to disclose information after the fact.

The Pirate Party of Canada considers the current systems that required specific requests to obtain information about government expenditures to be woefully lacking and open to abuse. The Access to Information Act adds to this issue by allowing for long periods of time before responses to queries and subsequent data can be provided. With the current technological advancements that Canadians have access to, both of these issues can and should be dealt with in a proactive manner by automatically making spending figures publicly available online.

“In theory this would create no more work for bureaucrats than already exist. One would assume that they would need to enter the information on department spending at some point. Having the computer systems set up to automatically copy spending information to a public government website while removing private and personal information would be a relatively straight forward task”, says James Wilson, Leader of the Pirate Party of Canada. “Such a system would be more efficient and transparent. It would also be advantageous to the government by opening its spending up to the most thorough auditor of all; the Canadian public.”

The Pirate Party of Canada is a federal political party focused on thoughtful information policy reform, genuine democracy, civil liberties, and the freedom of the Internet. You can find out more online at www.pirateparty.ca .

Category: Government Transparency, Internet, Newsroom, Privacy.
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>>>Pourquoi le Parti Pirate?<<<

Why Pirate Party?

1. Open Democracy

One of our main founding principles was Open Government. This means an Open Data policy with proactive disclosure and free access to government data. This will allow anyone to scrutinize and catch any error, negligence or corruption early on. Open Government also means increased transparency, and giving constituents real voices. This can be achieved with electoral reform .

2. Mincome / Basic Income Guarantee (B.I.G.)

Unemployment and income inequality is on the rise and we risk a breakdown of social cohesion without a system for resource distribution as we face increased automation. We're shifting from a bureaucratic culture of constant work-demands to a culture of passion, joy, and learning for the sake of learning.

Mincome will lead to cost savings and create a sustainable economy. See our press release for how that can be achieved.

3. Autonomy and Decentralization

We believe that the world works best when individuals are making informed decisions. It is our goal to get all information to all people, so they may be more informed voters, consumers, participants, and teachers. We do not need to force information culture & the hacker ethic onto people we can simply allow them to choose access. We believe the right to choose our identity, name, and appearance is inalienable.

4. Copyright and Patent Reform
Copyright and patent's main purpose was for propagation of culture and innovation. Our current copyright and patent laws are continuously being corrupted due to lobbying by copyright and patent monopolist. These monopolist refuses to innovate and provide wider access and pass on the savings from the new lower distribution cost. Instead the copyright and patent terms keeps getting extended to benefit the few to the detriment of the public interest. The opposite should happen. Copyright and patent terms should be shortened since our new information infrastructure (i.e. the internet) have brought us cheaper and faster means of distributing media contents and information. Mandatory licensing, owner's rights to a non-DRM product, open access to research data and shorter copyright term are some of the natural changes that is needed if we want to create a more open and progressive society. This will ensure future artist and innovator are not hampered by patent and copyright gatekeepers who uses rent seeking law for anti-competitive purposes.

Human beings increasingly have a moral duty to share information with one another. Libraries are stuck in the last century, enforcing artificial scarcity on digital content. If libraries were upgraded for the modern age, we would no longer need filesharing. And let's face it, watching and listening to whatever you want to is fun. It breaks down arbitrary global borders of access and creates a global culture defined by people- not by corporations.

At the Pirate Party- we believe more information leads to better decisions. We believe that more voices leads to better compromises. We believe in Canadians.

Our democracy need a serious upgrade and Pirate Party aims to change politics to the way it should be.

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