Long before the arrival of the Public Access to Information Act in 2015, The Royal Gazette has been established as the leading source in Bermuda for holding governments to account and for speaking truth to power — whether in the political sphere or in industry. It is a responsibility of service to the people of this country that we hold dear, are proud to uphold and have no intention of relinquishing.

The overwhelming volume of information requested is that historically which governments and others in power do not wish to fall under public scrutiny. It is that simple. Or else they would have made such information freely available in the first place — or not buried it in plain sight within highly technical documents.

Whistle-blowers or otherwise anonymous sources carry with them a degree of deniability, and we appreciate that. However, a successful Pati request, the equivalent effect of squeezing blood from a stone for the public good, is irrefutable. And, let’s be frank, that is what lies at the crux of the Public Access to Information Amendment (Royal Gazette) Bill.

Yes, we might as well add the Gazette to this particular piece of legislation given that our elected legislators have rather predictably taken to calling us out for doing our jobs, the pursuit of which goes far beyond concocting methods of discomfiting the sitting government by way of Pati.

The facility was designed to allow you to ask a public authority for records to help understand the work that goes on in the public authority and how it makes decisions. This makes the entire government more accountable and also removes unnecessary secrecy.

It allows any member of the public to apply to government or public bodies to see public documents, such as crime statistics or details on government expenditure.

It is also a useful source for journalists — not a research department, Mr Deputy Speaker.

Using the Act, journalists can get information from people in power, sometimes information they would rather have kept secret.

In Britain, the Freedom of Information Act became legal in 2000. It took nine years for such public access to records to reveal the MPs’ expenses scandal that redefined politics in that space.

The public had a right to know, so could The Daily Telegraph be rightfully accused, as the Gazette has been by our politicians, of being frivolous, vexatious, nefarious, duplicitous or bearing malintent when making this request for information?

Another British request revealed that 74 police officers serving with the Metropolitan Police had criminal records. Did the public have the right to know? Again, could the requester be rightfully accused of being frivolous, vexatious, nefarious, duplicitous or bearing malintent?

You see where we’re going here — and in neither of the above cases can we presume that the gathering of information consumed fewer than 16 man hours or was charged for at a rate of $60 per additional hour when the process exceeded that timescale.

What the Government is planning to do as of January 1, 2025 is blunt the effectiveness of The Royal Gazette in getting unvarnished truth to the Bermuda public. That much could be gleaned from the venom emitting from Messrs Derrick Burgess, Wayne Caines and Jamahl Simmons under parliamentary privilege in support of this attempted stranglehold.

While Mr Burgess and Mr Caines left little to the imagination in their thinly veiled descriptions of the Gazette as “certain organisations” and “entities in our country ... we all know who they are”, Mr Simmons, the “award-winning journalist” that he is, removed all doubt when he called us out by name.

It is true that a downside of the Act is that it can be open to abuse and that it can consume time, but it is also true that the Information Commissioner advised very early in the piece that government and public bodies should be fortified with a view to accommodating the requirements of Pati.

Has the Government done that outside of appointing information officers?

The unintended consequence is that some departments have more to hide than others and as such would face more inquiries — between 20 per cent and 26 per cent of the whole for just a couple of public authorities, according to Cabinet Office minister Crystal Caesar when presenting the amendment in parliament.

Perhaps those public authorities that history has shown experience the greatest volume of requests can be given more support that the Information Commissioner spoke of during the embryonic stages of Pati. Say, a fraction of that $25 million the Minister of Finance revealed ahead of the Midyear Budget Review?

Instead, the Government wishes the Gazette to foot the bill to ensure the public’s right to know, with a Public Service in its back pocket that for the most part already has shown an antipathy for co-operating with a strong independent media.

Or, rather, that we go away and accept that what was intended to be kept out of the public domain remains as such.

We are not alone in resisting this amendment, as the Information Commissioner, whose office was not consulted over the changes, has given warning of the pitfalls. “The resulting amendments tabled today fall short of the comprehensive and well-established legislative frameworks found in other jurisdictions that strike an effective balance between managing the burdens on public authorities with the public’s fundamental right to access public information,” she said.

Gitanjali Gutierrez also noted the lack of safeguards such as waiving fees based on a requester’s financial status, or for requests of national importance, and said it risked promoting “poor practices” to justify requests getting turned down because of the length of time it would take to respond.

Since the advent of Pati legislation, there have been numerous exclusives published by The Royal Gazette — each which we maintain were in the public’s interest, each which demonstrated that our leaders do not always put their best foot forward.

Below are merely a handful of the stories gained from Pati requests, stories we would have preferred to have shared without the need for such, but which came about sometimes belatedly in the wake of strong resistance.

You be the judge of whether first there is a public interest, whether the stories could have been achieved within 16 man hours before a charge, and whether the Gazette acted with frivolous, vexatious, nefarious and duplicitous intent:

• Hospital near misses and adverse events

This was a story in which it was shown that King Edward VII Memorial Hospital logged 430 incidents that resulted in harm to patients inside a five-year period — a number that was far higher than earlier reported by the Bermuda Hospitals Board.

• Six-figure salaries of public officials

These included various stories about officials from the BHB, the Bermuda Tourism Authority and the Bermuda Gaming Commission, which has cost the public purse millions of dollars with precious little to show for it.

• Special report on gaming and casino gaming secrets revealed

Again, information that authorities didn’t want the public to know.

• Cost of sending children in care abroad

Countless stories about at-risk children and revelations that they had no legal representation before being sent overseas. In some ways, this was a spin-off from the excellent Who Cares? series of December 2019 in which we brought to light many of the practices that have let our young people down.

• The financial report on Sandys 360

The public learnt how many millions were squandered on a project that may have had the best of intentions but was a case of throwing good money after bad.

• Regulatory Authority CEO’s pay-off

It shouldn’t have needed a Pati request to learn Matthew Copeland was paid at least $220,000 to go away, but it did.

• Police officer cleared in fatal crash

No authority should be outside the reach of Pati, and here it was the turn of the Bermuda Police Service to come clean in the wake of the 2019 death of bike rider Antoine Seaman in Sandys.

• Fairmont Southampton redundancy payments

It was this episode that resulted in the much respected Curtis Dickinson becoming a back bencher, but we were able to reveal correspondence between Gencom and the Government, which initially footed the bill. In the public interest? You bet.

• Historical land losses controversy

It was David Burt who called for the Commission of Inquiry into Historical Land Losses, the results of which are still rumbling on within the community. But what the public did not know, and would not have known unless we went digging, was why Ivan Whitehall KC resigned as senior counsel having “lost the confidence” of some members of the commission.

• Clearing the Air

Our special report on the impact of soot fallout coming from the Belco plant was not only revealing and thought-provoking, but it was damning, too. As president of the utility, Wayne Caines’s conflict of interest is writ clear as he speaks out against the Gazette’s reach.

• Policing the antivaxxers

Sophia Cannonier and partner Mike Watson were a constant source of resistance during the Covid crisis, maintaining that their natural immunity indeed made them immune to the rules we all had to live by. But our police service, who were already stretched and pretty much penniless, spent almost $14,000 in man hours keeping the couple under wraps.

So those are just a few of the stories published which authorities have attempted to keep from the public and which required Pati to provide clarity.

If the Government had its way, some of those would have never seen the light of day because the information officer might have been obliged to reply, “This is going to take more than 100 hours to resolve” and then kill it.

On the flip side, using an argument that the 13 listed stories — including three for the “six-figure salaries” — occupied on average 50 hours of public officers’ time, the overall bill to The Royal Gazette would have been $26,520. (13 x [50-16] x 60)

At best, it’s a shakedown; at worst, it’s a reinforced cloak of secrecy.

Who stands to gain from that? The public or the Government?