CANADA: Transparency is the answer

03.jan.12
The Gulf News
Brodie Thomas

There was a bit of a stink in the provincial media just before Christmas with word that a popular restaurant in St. John’s had been closed due to unsanitary conditions in the kitchen.
Specifically, the kitchen had a problem with rodent droppings.
At one point in the fray, a reporter asked the Service Newfoundland and Labrador Minister if the department was considering making restaurant inspection results available online.
The answer was no, and it’s too bad really.
When a customer frequents a restaurant, there is an element of trust. Nobody in this day and age asks to see the kitchen. But the kitchen is a sort of public space outside of public eyes.
We count first and foremost on restaurant owners and managers to ensure things are kept sanitary, as they likely are in the vast majority of cases.
We count on the health inspector to make sure standards are upheld.
But if the province were to post results online, or even in the windows of restaurants as is done in other Canadian jurisdictions such as Toronto, managers and owners would be extra cautious in making sure things are kept clean in the kitchen at all times. It would lead to self-policing.
By making inspections transparent, the government would, in effect, make the walls between the dining room and the kitchen transparent without removing them at all.
It wouldn’t be a violation of the restaurant owner’s privacy, since there’s nothing private about running a restaurant, at least when it comes to food safety and handling. The information would not affect their ability to operate and compete, as long as they had nothing to hide.
It’s too bad that various levels of government are all too quick to keep public information from public eyes, while at the same time asking citizens to give up more and more of their private lives, supposedly for the public good.