"The Atlantic Institute for Market Studies in Halifax has not responded to questions."

That nugget was nested in the last line, last paragraph of a Globe and Mail story last week about the Harper government's efforts to "intimidate, muzzle and silence its critics."

Ottawa is spending $13.4 million so its tax auditors can descend, locust-like, on charitable groups not in lockstep with Harper's worldview, searching for real or imagined evidence they're devoting more than 10 per cent of their resources to political advocacy.

Why is it that all those stats-stuffed, footnote-filled, soberly sincere public policy backgrounder research reports published by inevitably "independent, non-partisan" yet somehow transparently ideological think-tanks and authored by multi-award-winning senior fellows and/or professors emereti are so… well, pedantically, ploddingly predictable?

It's not just unions any more.

The more I think about this, the more the idea makes sense: the time has come to shine a bright light on the fiscal operations of all organizations to which Canadian citizens must pay dues in order to work, as well as on all those that benefit from taxpayer-paid subsidies, enjoy charitable status or attempt to influence public policy.

We can do this by passing laws in Parliament and in our provincial legislatures requiring minimum public financial reporting standards for several categories of organization that do business with public funds, represent members who must join in order to be able to work or otherwise take advantage of public funding.