One bright spot in BP oil spill - Washington freedom of information law works

There's not much good news coming from the accident on BP's  Deepwater Horizon rig and the deadly oil leak choking the Gulf and spreading by the hour. However, journalists in Canada can only look with envy at how quickly the New York Times was able to access BP documents through the the Freedom of Information Act.

In the subsequent story, reporter Ian Urbina wa able to show BP had  serious safety concerns on the rig before the accident and that problems included loss of "well control." BP execs ignored its own internal reports about concerns that occurred far earlier than Congress had been led to believe by the company.

In Canada, requests most often turn into weeks, months, even years, of delay. Moreover - and more envy here - Congress said no a few weeks ago, when BP tried to turn off the underwater video feed showing the spewing oil. Hard to imagine Canadian politicians showing similar grit -  although one can always hope.

Comments

[melissa goldstein]

This great article from Rolling Stone shows that the grit US politicians showed amounted to little more than a grain of sand in a massive oil slick: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/111965?RS_show_page=0

The Rolling Stone article highlights the role that gutted environmental regulations and corrupt environmental regulators played in creating the disaster in the Gulf.

While access to information in the US might be enviable, the US' environmental regulations--gutted under Bush, and perpetuated by Obama--should be about as enviable as the BP oil disaster itself given the way they put lives, lands and livelihoods at risk. That, however, isn't stopping Stephen Harper from sneakily trying to implement them here. Yesterday Parliament approved Harper's budget, in which the federal government hid changes to Canada’s environmental protection laws to avoid public scrutiny, putting Canada one step closer to getting our very own BP oil disaster.

(see: http://www.ecojustice.ca/media-centre/press-releases/don2019t-gut-environmental-assessment-law-through-budget-bill-groups-say for more information.)