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access to information

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LegislationJuly 8, 20267 min read
For $5, You Can Make the Federal Government Hand Over Its Records. Here's How Access to Information Actually Works — and Where It Breaks Down.
The federal access-to-information regime — usually called ATIP, for Access to Information and Privacy — rests on two statutes. The Access to Information Act gives Canadian citizens, permanent residents, and individuals and corporations present in Canada a right to records under the control of federal government institutions, for a $5 application fee. The Privacy Act runs in parallel and covers requests for your own personal information, at no charge. The right of access is the rule, but it is qualified by exemptions and exclusions: cabinet confidences are excluded from the Act entirely for twenty years under section 69, and institutions routinely invoke exemptions for advice and recommendations to ministers (section 21), personal information, third-party business information, law-enforcement and security matters, and solicitor-client privilege. Institutions must respond within 30 days but may extend that deadline — with no fixed statutory cap — for large volumes or consultations, and long extensions and missed deadlines are the system's most persistent and best-documented failure. A missed deadline is a deemed refusal, which the requester can take to the Information Commissioner of Canada, an independent officer who investigates complaints and, since 2019, can issue binding orders for the release of records — orders the government can contest only by going to Federal Court. Journalists use the system to surface documents governments would not volunteer; the largest share of request volume, however, comes from people seeking their own files, especially immigration files.

For $5, You Can Make the Federal Government Hand Over Its Records. Here's How Access to Information Actually Works — and Where It Breaks Down.

The federal access-to-information regime — usually called ATIP, for Access to Information and Privacy — rests on two statutes. The Access to Information Act gives Canadian citizens, permanent residents, and individuals and corporations present in Canada a right to records under the control of federal government institutions, for a $5 application fee. The Privacy Act runs in parallel and covers requests for your own personal information, at no charge. The right of access is the rule, but it is qualified by exemptions and exclusions: cabinet confidences are excluded from the Act entirely for twenty years under section 69, and institutions routinely invoke exemptions for advice and recommendations to ministers (section 21), personal information, third-party business information, law-enforcement and security matters, and solicitor-client privilege. Institutions must respond within 30 days but may extend that deadline — with no fixed statutory cap — for large volumes or consultations, and long extensions and missed deadlines are the system's most persistent and best-documented failure. A missed deadline is a deemed refusal, which the requester can take to the Information Commissioner of Canada, an independent officer who investigates complaints and, since 2019, can issue binding orders for the release of records — orders the government can contest only by going to Federal Court. Journalists use the system to surface documents governments would not volunteer; the largest share of request volume, however, comes from people seeking their own files, especially immigration files.