Several witnesses argued that the way the Act is currently applied can be an impediment to journalists. In May 2005, the Canadian Newspaper Association (CNA) released a national audit of Canada’s freedom of information systems, which gave 75 per cent of federal departments a failing grade for compliance with freedom of information laws. This led to calls for amendments to the Access to Information Act.
There has also been considerable criticism of the costs attached to requests for information. A witness before the Special Senate Committee on the Anti-Terrorism Act told of receiving a bill for $25,000 for a request to the Department of Environment.In May 2005, the Ottawa Citizen reported that a woman in Toronto who sought information on city spending on playground repairs was sent a bill for $12,960. The CNA has argued that fees should not be set on a cost recovery basis, but that the government’s costs should be viewed as part of the price of ensuring effective democracy.
And more, from an excellent piece in The Walrus Magazine,
In Canada, the adequacy of the act has been in question from the outset, and it hasn’t improved much since the 1980s. “Compared with the US and Britain,” says University of Ottawa law professor Amir Attaran, who has worked on several recent high-profile cases involving transparency issues, “Canada’s system of disclosure is far inferior.” A 2008 study by the caj and the Canadian Newspaper Association actually ranked this country’s access law behind those of India, Mexico, and Pakistan. Among the most significant problems the report cited were the information commissioner’s inability to compel the government to release documents, and the exclusion from the act of about a hundred important government-affiliated bodies, including Canadian Blood Services and the Nuclear Waste Management Organization. The study further found fault with Section 21 of the act, which gives ministers broad rights to withhold records on the internal decision-making processes, deliberations, and advice of government.
A different report, issued that same year by the Public Policy Forum, traced the ways in which successive governments since Trudeau’s have allowed the ati act to decay. In practice, ati offices within federal bureaucracies have become “isolated, under-resourced, [and] under-professionalized,” succumbing far too often to a mindset that says, “when in doubt, cross out.” The ati law has spawned such fear and contempt in Ottawa that some civil servants now communicate orally or use sticky notes to avoid creating a trail. These approaches speak to the overarching need of Canadian bureaucracies to control their information at all costs, lest something damaging come out on the floor of Parliament or in the media. One tactic in particular — delay, delay, and delay — has created such a massive logjam of requests that it threatens to crash the entire access system.
Moving forward, things have only gotten worse, especially under the Conservatives – the ones who campaigned, and arguably won in 2006 as a result – on transparent and accountable government.
Since 1989, in Canada, CAIRS, an online database of all the compiled and completed Access to Information requests existed, until recently. Essentially, after somebody requested information, and the federal department compiled said information, it would be posted on this centralized database that anybody could access on the Internet (later introduced since 1989). It was a really convenient tool to see past requests. Since 2008, it no longer exists. The Conservatives abolished this database. Official justification from Stephen Harper was that it “slow[ed] down the access to information”.
Now the process for obtaining previous requested documents varies from department to department, but it goes a little something like this. You visit the departments website, go to the “Proactive Disclosure” section and look for the document that says “Completed Access to Information Requests”. Then, you browse the specific year or months available, view the document, peruse it to find what you’re looking for/something of interest. Typically, only a few years are posted. Anything pre-2010, good luck.
The next step depends, as well. You can phone, mail or email the department with the code of the documents you want. Some departments have a PDF they can give you, while others will mail you the documents – some will even mail you a CD with the PDFs of the documents! A department might not even give you the documents, but so far I’ve had fair service.
See? Harper is improving access to information by making it far more laborious and arduous for the person seeking said information. And none of this gets into how to make a FORMAL request for information, and a subsequent complaint to the Information Commission if things go bad.
No wonder we rank at number 51th out of all the countries in the world for accountability according to a study done by the Halifax-based Centre for Law and Democracy and Access Info.
**
Let me describe to you a personal experience I’ve had with this glorious system.
In my investigation (or call it whatever the hell you want) of GEO Group Inc. involvement with the Canadian government, I was lucky enough to find that other people had the exact same curiosity as me. In the particular departments involved, other (presumably good) people have previously requested the exact information I wanted. So, an informal request would do.
(For the record, and for your brain, this is how a formal request works: you mail them a Access to Information Request form that you can print out from the Justice Department, that you fill out detailing specifically – to the specific department – the information you desire. I stress specificity, as that’s very vital. Next, you enclose, with that form, $5 dollars in an envelope and you mail it to the person responsible with Access to Information Requests in that department. That’s right, you mail them and pay them money to access the information. You can’t phone in a request, you can’t email a request – you can only mail it or hand it in physically)
So, I did an informal request as I didn’t pay the five dollars, I merely asked the department (in an email) for the previously requested and compiled documents. It didn’t take too long, less than two weeks if my memory serves me correctly.
Documents arrived, they decided to mail them to me free of charge (yay!). Uh oh, out of the 28ish pages they sent me, pages 1 to 25 were completely redacted, see here for image and further context. According to the law, I had to file a complaint within 30 days or any complaint I would make is null and void.
So, I went to complain to the Information Commission which deals with alleged unfair redactions or lack of reasonable disclosure. Considering I got absolutely no information other than things that were already available, I decided a complaint was in order. This also requires filling out a form and mailing it to the Information Commission – no phone or email. Though, thankfully, I don’t have to pay this time.
So, after a month or so and no reply, I phoned the Information Commission office wondering if my complaint even arrived. Considering the massive backlog of complaints they have, and the fact they’re getting funding cuts, it’s understandable that it will take a while for them to process complaints. After some recalling, the person on the other end obtained my complaint and pointed out something vital:
This was a informal request. As the person on the other end told me “You don’t have a right to complain“. This was the grand conclusion!
But there was a such a simple solution. One, print out formal Request Information form, fill it out, put in envelope, include $5, mail to department, wait a month or 8, obtain redacted files, print out complaint form, mail to Information Commission with exact same complaints before, wait for a month to two years, potentially get the information I wanted. Until I do that, I “don’t have a right to complain.”