The Liberals know how to improve Canadians’ access to government information. Will they?
Global News
Canada’s information watchdog warned citizens’ right to government documents may soon be 'beyond repair' unless Liberals make good on a 2015 pledge to fix the system.
The good news is the Liberals know exactly what they need to do to fix Canada’s beleaguered access-to-information system.
The question for 2022 is: will they do it?
After more than a year of public consultations, the government released a detailed report on the flaws and frustrations surrounding Canada’s nearly four-decades-old Access to Information laws.
The system, created in 1983 under Pierre Trudeau, allows any Canadian to send a request for unreleased government documents – memos, reports, emails, data – for a $5 fee. In theory, the request is supposed to be fulfilled within 30 days.
In practice, the system is plagued by delays – with some requests taking years to complete – and the information released is often liberally censored. This isn’t just an inconvenience for researchers and reporters; with unprecedented billions flowing from federal coffers and new, social fabric-altering programs like national child care, the federal government holds crucial information that could help inform important public debates and decisions.
And the problems that have long plagued the system have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Even before the pandemic … chronic under-resourcing had created backlogs in both access requests and complaints that had grown year after year,” Caroline Maynard, the federal information watchdog, warned the Liberals in April 2020.
Maynard said the system could soon be “beyond repair” without government action.