The Access to Information Act (R.S., 1985, c. A-1) () or Information Act is a Canadian Act providing the right of access to information under the control of a federal government institution. As of 2020, the Act allowed "people who pay $5 to request an array of federal files". Paragraph 2. (1) of the Act ("Purpose") declares that government information should be available to the public, but with necessary exceptions to the right of access that should be limited and specific, and that decisions on the disclosure of government information should be reviewed independently of government. Later paragraphs assign responsibility for this review to an Information Commissioner, who reports directly to parliament rather than the government in power. However, the Act provides the commissioner the power only to recommend rather than compel the release of requested information that the commissioner judges to be not subject to any exception specified in the Act.
History By 1982, Australia, Denmark, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, and the U.S. (1966), had enacted modern Freedom of information legislation. Canada's Access to Information Act came into force in 1983, under the Pierre Trudeau government, permitting Canadians to retrieve information from government files, establishing what information could be accessed, mandating timelines for response. By the standards of that era, it came to be considered a model of good practice, having taken the implementation of the law more seriously than other countries. The Act created new offices staffed with trained professionals to manage the inflow of requests, and developed formal procedures to encourage prompt processing of requests. Furthermore, the Information Commissioner served as an easily accessible ombudsperson to arbitrate cases of possible maladministration.
A complementary Privacy Act also came into force in 1983. The purpose of this Act was to extend the present laws of Canada that protect the privacy of individuals with respect to personal information about themselves held by a federal government institution and that provide individuals with a right of access to that information. It is a Crown copyright. This Act stipulates that complaints about possible violations of the Act may be reported to the Privacy Commissioner.
In 1998, following the Somalia Affair, a clause was appended to the Act, making it a federal offence to destroy, falsify, or conceal public documents.
Canadian access to information laws distinguish between access to records generally and access to records that contain personal information about the person making the request. Subject to exceptions, individuals have a right of access to records that contain their own personal information under the Privacy Act but the general public does not have a right of access to records that contain personal information about others under the Access to Information Act.
From 1989 to 2008, requests made to the federal government were catalogued in the Coordination of Access to Information Requests System (CAIRS). Although CAIRS was not originally designed for public use, the information contained in the database generated substantial and continued public interest. Two non-governmental websites offered information from CAIRS to the public with a search facility. In April 2008, the Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper terminated the maintenance of this database.
Proposed refinements Mulroney government In 1987, the Solicitor General tabled a report to Parliament with the authorship and unanimous support of a "Justice Committee" consisting of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice together with himself, entitled Open and Shut: Enhancing the Right to Know and the Right to Privacy. It contained over 100 recommendations for amending the ATI and Privacy Acts. Many of these dealt with exemptions from access, recommending the addition of a discretionary injury test in most cases, which would evaluate "the harm to the interest (e.g., the conduct of international affairs) that could reasonably be expected to result from disclosure". The Committee proposed that the complete exclusion of Cabinet records from the operation of the Act be deleted and replaced with an exemption that would not be subject to an injury test. This crucial change would have allowed the Information Commissioner and the Federal Court of Canada to review alleged "cabinet documents" in order to determine whether or not they are, in fact, Cabinet confidences and eligible for exemption. The government response to the report, published in 1987 by the Minister of Supply and Services and entitled "Access and Privacy: The Steps Ahead", generally supported the administrative, but not the legislative, changes proposed in the Justice Committee report. The concept of significant injury as a basis for the application of exemptions was rejected and the exemption for information received in confidence from other governments was justified on the basis that, "[t]he willingness of other governments to continue to share their information with Canada would likely be adversely affected by the lesser degree of protection which would be given if these recommendations were implemented".
Chretien government In 2000, Information Commissioner John Grace presented his case for reform of the Act. He recognized that "while the Act has served well in enshrining the right to know, it has also come to express a single-request, often confrontational approach to providing information – an approach which is too slow and cumbersome for an information society." He made forty-three recommendations for updating the Act.
In August 2000, the Minister of Justice and the President of the Treasury Board launched a task force to review the Act. The committee's report, delivered in June 2002, entitled, Access to Information: Making it Work for Canadians, found "a crisis in information management" within the government. It made 139 recommendations for legislative, administrative and cultural reform. Nothing came of this report.
Martin government In the fall of 2003, the Member of Parliament John Bryden attempted to initiate a comprehensive overhaul of the Act through a private members bill, Bill C-462, which died on the Order Paper with the dissolution of the 37th Parliament in May 2004. A similar bill was introduced by NDP MP Pat Martin on 7 October 2004 as Bill C-201. It met a similar fate.
In April 2005, the Minister of Justice Irwin Cotler introduced a discussion paper entitled A Comprehensive Framework for Access to Information Reform.
Later in 2005, a draft bill, entitled the Open Government Act, was tabled before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics. Developed by Information Commissioner John Reid at the request of the Standing Committee, the proposed act included substantial changes to the law.Some information about the development of this draft is available in a document of Notes, Sources and References. A primary objective was to address concerns about a "culture of secrecy" within political and bureaucratic environments. This draft bill initially received multi-party support, but not enough to result in the introduction by a government or passage in the form of either of two private member's bills based on this draft.
Harper government Essentially this same draft bill with the same title "Open Government Act", but with the crucial addition of full order-making powers for record release, was introduced by NDP MP Pat Martin as Bill C-554 in 2008, and as Bill C-301 in 2011. The latter reached First Reading on 29 September in the first session of the 41st Parliament, and then was reinstated in the second session on 16 October 2013. As of September 2014, it remained on the Order Paper awaiting Second Reading.
In 2009, the Information Commissioner Robert Marleau appeared before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics. The Commissioner emphasized that "work [was] urgently needed to modernize" and strengthen the Act. He presented "a list of twelve specific recommendations that represent an important first step" to "address only the most pressing matters". (About 15 weeks later, Mr. Marleau abruptly resigned five years before his normal end of term, for "entirely personal and private" reasons. This was reported to have raised "doubts about the pace and direction of reforms to Canada's access to information laws that he was spearheading." )
On June 6, 2012, the Legal and Legislative Affairs Division of the Parliamentary Information and Research Service published a Library of Parliament Background Paper, entitled The Access to Information Act and Proposals for Reform. The purpose of the Paper was to identify the key points emerging from the major studies of the Act that had been conducted over the previous two decades, and to analyze in some detail some recent proposals concerning the reworking of the legislation. The Paper summarized eleven significant efforts within parliament and the federal government from 1987 to 2009. It then concluded by noting that the Conservative government of Stephen Harper in power in 2011−2012 had proposed to improve access to information, not by amending the Act, but rather by introducing what it called "open government" and "open data" initiatives. The Paper goes on to report that, in response, Canada's information and privacy commissioners suggested that the Action Plan on Open Government represents a missed opportunity for comprehensive reform of the Act. Information Commissioner Suzanne Legault suggested in a letter that the government recognizes and supports the relationship between open government and a modernized Act. She observed, "Our investigations in recent years have demonstrated not only the obsolescence of the statute but also a number of deficiencies in it which may well impede or hamper the development of a truly open government that is receptive to the needs of its citizens and its economy and in step with other administrations."
Trudeau government During his Campaign in 2015, candidate Justin Trudeau, and the Liberal Party he was representing, promised to change the Access to Information Act to include the Prime Minister's and Cabinet Office within its scope. However, his first proposed change to the act in June 2017 did not include anything about either offices. Instead, the proposed changes included promises to proactively release more information than in the past. The bill did include the courts within its scope, which meant that judge's travel and hospitality expenses were now made public. Additionally, briefing binders and mandate letters were also automatically made public.
Other changes that were proposed allowed the Information Commissioner to order specific government departments to publish information. If the department does not, the case is then to be taken to federal court. Another promise made by the Liberals was to hold reviews of the Access to Information Act every 5 years at a minimum. Additionally, under the new proposal the Information Commissioner has the right to refuse to address complaints judged to be "frivolous or vexatious". Under the previous version of the bill, anyone could appeal to the Information Commissioner's office.
Most critiques of the changes to the act concerned the broken promise from the election, while most of the people defending the proposal focused on expanded proactive disclosure. Treasury Board President Scott Brison said this in defense of the government's actions: