An NDP government would review a series of secret orders in council adopted by Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government and, if necessary, overturn some of them, says New Democratic Party justice critic Françoise Boivin.

Boivin said an NDP government will take the secret orders in council, first reported by iPolitics Wednesday, out of the safe, review them and determine whether they should remain in force or — if the NDP wants to overturn them — what legal consequences the government could face.

“Of course we will have to (review them),” Boivin said in an interview with iPolitics. “You cannot just be blind and be inside a legal situation that you know nothing about.”

Boivin wrote Thursday to Janice Charette, clerk of the Privy Council, expressing her concern at the rise in the number of secret orders in council. Boivin called on the Privy Council to publish a list of the secret OICs by date and chronological order going back to 2006 as well as the name of the minister who initiated the order in council and the reason for withholding the contents of these Cabinet orders from the public.

“The massive and unexplained increase in secrecy surrounding the decisions of the Federal Cabinet is extremely disturbing,” she wrote.

If the Privy Council and the Harper government refuses, the NDP will seek answers after the election, Boivin told iPolitics.

“We should at least have some idea of what it is… and if they don’t do it voluntarily, we’ll have to address the issue when a new government will be formed and see how we can make sure that this doesn’t ever happen again.”

“It’s scary because we don’t know what they have (gotten) us into and it’s scary for any government that would replace that Conservative government.”

When Parliament resumes after the election, Boivin said she would like to see a mechanism put in place to ensure that Parliament can review the decision to make some orders in council secret.

“I think Parliament has a right as a whole to review this.”

Boivin’s comments come after a review by iPolitics of nearly 32,000 orders in council adopted between 1999 and 2015 revealed that the Harper government has adopted 25 secret, or unpublished, orders in council that have been hidden from Parliament and Canadians.

Since last September alone, there have been eight secret orders in council.

By comparison, the previous Liberal government adopted only three secret orders in council in the seven years between 1999 and 2005 — two of them in 2004 and one in 2005. Between 1999 and 2003, there were no unpublished orders in council although some, in 1999, contained only barebones information such as the number, the date and the sponsoring minister — in most cases former Solicitor General Lawrence MacAulay.

In 2001, the year of the devastating 9/11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, there were no unpublished orders in council.

Boivin said she can understand the need for a government to keep some things secret but this is excessive.

“I can understand sometimes for matters of really high national security and so on, I can foresee that that can happen. (With) that number of times, I’m starting to worry what the hell is happening that so many things are kept secret.”

Boivin said she doesn’t want to speculate on the content of the secret orders.

“It could be so many possibilities with the ISIS situation, with arms sold to certain countries. There are so many possibilities and that is the problem with that way of dealing with government affairs.”

Duff Conacher, co-founder of Democracy Watch and a visiting professor at the University of Ottawa, said the secret orders in council are a far cry from the kind of transparency Stephen Harper promised when he campaigned for office in 2006.

Conacher suggested the decision to make some orders in council secret could be challenged before the courts or investigated by Canada’s information commissioner, Suzanne Legault.

The Liberal Party has yet to respond to requests for comment from iPolitics.

Additional reporting by Kirsten Smith

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