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Governments that came to power used to be able to burn their old speeches.

Sadly for incoming prime ministers in the digital age, the rash promises they made to get elected are archived, just a click away.

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tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or John Ivison: Failed Access to Information reforms the latest in a string of broken Liberal promises Back to video

The Liberals pledged to restore trust in our democracy by being open with information as a default. The Access to Information Act would be updated to meet this standard, their election platform said, including an expansion of coverage to ministerial offices and the Prime Minister’s Office.

But the revised act revealed by Treasury Board president Scott Brison late Monday fell well short of those Olympian standards of transparency.

Instead of being open to ATI requests, in future those offices will proactively disclose travel and hospitality expenses, Question Period binders and ministerial briefing notes.

Photo by Sean Kilpatrick/THE CANADIAN PRESS

The press conference that followed was comedy gold.

“You broke your campaign promise right here. All you’ve done is codify proactive disclosure for a certain set of documents in ministers’ offices. Why did you break that campaign promise?” asked one disgruntled reporter.