Canada’s Transparency System is Broken
I n April of 2017, I filed an access-to-information request-a request to obtain documents closely held by various arms of the federal government. I logged on to an online portal, filled out my name and address, gave them my credit-card information for the $5 fee, and indicated what records I was seeking.
The Access to Information Act gives Canadian citizens and permanent residents-even corporations-the right to ask for documents ranging from departmental memos and email correspondence to financial statements and notes from high-level meetings. Access-to-information requests are among the best tools we have for finding the real stories behind policy decisions or for cutting through spartan political talking points. I would wager that most people have never used them-though we’ve all seen the fruits of that labour. Access-to-information requests by journalists have unearthed probable political interference in a decision to not fund an aid group; a report revealing that inadequate inspections took place before a pipeline rupture; and the existence of a secret database used to stop travellers at the US-Canada border.
I was looking for internal documents detailing the Trudeau government’s purported efforts to modernize the access-to-information regime itself-a metarequest, I realize. Justin Trudeau had promised to improve and expand the system. He told the country, prior to the 2015 election, that, under the government of then prime minister Stephen Harper, secrecy and centralization had become the norm-and that he would fix this with openness and transparency. His election platform promised to make government information “open by default, in formats that are modern and easy to use.” The Liberals promised to give the information commissioner teeth, “giving them the power to issue binding orders for disclosure.” The party promised to eliminate almost all fees and to make the act apply to not only ministers’ offices, but the Prime Minister’s Office itself. And it promised a full legislative review of the act, which would ostensibly take aim at the wildly abused exemptions and perpetually ignored time limits therein.
More than a year into power, however, that vow had yet to materialize. Hence my request. I wanted to get a glimpse at the internal machinations of a system operating under enormous strain. Two months later, the documents I requested arrived. (The act technically requires that requests be answered within thirty days, but provides departments almost unending latitude to extend and frustrate that deadline.) Dozens of pages were withheld. Others were whited out almost entirely. Even a page titled “Status of ATI Phase I,” which-I can only assume-recapped the progress made thus far on improving the system, was redacted entirely.
So I filed a complaint. Under the system, if a requester feels their right to access the documents was unfairly limited, they can complain to the information commissioner. More than a year after my initial complaint, the commissioner concluded that information had been improperly withheld. The office of the commissioner managed to get more pages released. When they arrived, I scoured them. Then I saw it. Two sentences floating, mid-page, in a sea of nothing. A string of typed words floating in a sea of whiteout.
I complained again. In December 2018, the information commissioner responded again. I had, for a second time, won my crusade for information. I ripped open the manila envelope to find a CD, dug out an old laptop with a drive capable of reading that CD, and opened the single PDF it contained. The sea of white around that lonely paragraph had been dried up. The whole page was now legible. It was a letter from Treasury Board President Scott Brison addressed to Conservative MP Blaine Calkins, chair of the House of Commons standing committee on access to information, privacy, and ethics. The letter, in short, said: “Thank you.”
