Government report outed by blogger

Readers of this blog might remember how disgusted I was when the government buried its how report on the vulnerability of Canadians to climate change. Even worse, the document is only available on request, one chapter at a time if you want it by email.

On its front page this morning, the Ottawa Citizen points out that one blogger went further than just getting pissed: “Miguel Tremblay” at ptaff.ca got all the chapters sent to him, assembled them all nice and tight (even in conformity with the federal government’s electronic document naming conventions, s’il-vous-plaît) and posted the whole thing on his blog, in both languages.

Health Canada’s chief flack’s excuse that the document is too large to put on the web doesn’t fly. There’s plenty of large reports on government sites, including one just as large right here (see “The power of volunteers” report). Breaking it down in more manageable chunks was also an option.