Today, though, the Canadian public service is generally regarded as muzzled, more so than at any time in the modern era.
The current government seems to consider information a political tool, easily weaponized, and has ordered bureaucrats largely to refrain from communication with the general public they are supposed to serve. With particular emphasis, of course, on the media.
Naturally, that can become creeping self-censorship, as a matter of career self-interest.
How else to explain the suppression, at the outset of this election, of Natural Resources Canada's Fuel Focus Report?
The bi-weekly report, published on the NRCan website, is a rich collection of statistics on gasoline prices, a subject of interest to just about every consumer.
■CANADA VOTES: More federal election coverage
It provides comparisons with U.S. prices, and, probably most interesting, a rolling average of margins — the amount of the price of a litre of gas that goes into the pockets of the refiner and the retailer.
That sort of data is particularly valuable at a time when prices at the pump seem disjointed from the price of crude oil, which has cratered majestically over the past year.
But once the election was called that data was pulled offline, shutting down an impartial source of information to anyone who might want a serious discussion of fuel prices during the long weeks of campaigning.
