Publish and be Damned

NOTE: I have asked Jay Arthur to step aside for this issue.
Ever since the days of William Caxton, there has been a tension between those who "make" the news and those who report on it.
It has come to PPSReview's attention (via the Waste Diversion Ontario (WDO) board  minutes, ironically)  that some members of the WDO board are concerned that their discussions are being published before they have formally approved the  minutes (at a subsequent meeting, usually 30 days or so hence).
When more than 20 people sit down in a room and have a meeting, and then return to their respective workplaces to carry out whatever was agreed, any expectation of secrecy is unrealistic. People do not stop communicating with each other merely because the secretarial record of their discussions has not been endorsed.
PPSReview reports what people in the industry are already saying. The WDO does not operate in an ivory tower, nor should it.
While we respect matters that are truly "confidential", the general proceedings of a WDO meeting cannot be considered as such.
The actions agreed upon at such meetings are not delayed until the minutes are approved; it would be unworkable. Once those actions are carried out, it is clear what was agreed.
A good example of this would be the approval of the apparently new and improved scrap tire plan from Ontario Tire Stewardship (OTS). It had been previously stalled on the issue of who the stewards should be and because of concerns about incineration. Evidently, those concerns have been suitably mitigated to the satisfaction of those in the minister's office, and it sailed through at the WDO level. All that remains now is for the Province to find a way of back-

tracking on its previous objections and signing on the dotted line. No doubt the discussions that led to the said mitigation were truly confidential and we'll never know the details. It is fairly safe to assume there were not 20 people in the room when that little negotiation went down.
While stern warnings about confidentiality had been issued at the September 15 WDO meeting, to absolutely no-one's surprise, including the issuer of the warning, I'm sure, the plan's approval quickly became the worst-kept secret in town.
After being inaccessible for perhaps a week or so, the OTS website (www.ontariotirestewardship.ca) was reactivated in late September and on September 27, the plan's approval was  proudly announced, and the revised plan itself posted for anyone to download.
In this case, we respectfully suggest that confidentiality is based on content, not on the passage of time.
The notion that nothing can be said until the paperwork is done is archaic, and runs contrary to the WDO's mandated "transparency". The whole point of establishing PPSReview was to ensure a public debate could take place about what is happening not about what has already happened.
We invite our readers to add their views to this issue (email us at bbc@albedo.net).
In the meantime, we shall continue to report what we can, as soon as we can. We recognize it is not in some people's interest that this discussion take place. We make no apologies for this. We believe this work is very important.

Ben Bennett, publisher PPSReview