The Department of National Defence stands accused of trying to take advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic to withhold information from Parliament and Canadians.
There has been widespread concern about federal departments failing to respond to access-to-information requests since the crisis first started in earnest in March, but the Opposition Conservatives say the problem is much worse at the Defence Department.
Yet in more than a dozen recent requests, the Defence Department did not respond. One of those asked how many government ships had broken down in the last year. While the Canadian Coast Guard provided a response, the Defence Department did not. "May was the target date for us, but we didn't get the information on time. ... We were told it will be delayed by a couple of weeks, but we have not received it yet."
He went on to blame personnel having "limited access to certain records and databases" and "key military staff" being tasked with supporting the government's COVID-19 response for not responding to the order paper question.
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