Canada - First, they disconnect the phone lines. Then they lock the doors. And nobody gets out for 27 hours.
Ottawa goes to extreme lengths to shield the printing of the federal budget from prying eyes – a process that begins again this weekend in preparation for the huge stimulus package the Harper government will unveil on Tuesday.
“It's like Fort Knox,” one former Finance Department official said of the secrecy and security deployed to ensure that nothing like the 1989 leak of a budget pamphlet to Global TV reporter Doug Small ever happens again.
Twenty years after the embarrassing incident, the department refuses to discuss any aspect of printing the budget. (more)
