Watchdog says Canada a ‘laggard’ on information laws
OTTAWA — After releasing a report showing some mixed reviews on delays in federal government response to requests for public records, Parliament’s information watchdog, Suzanne Legault, said it’s time to correct the flaws in Canada’s access to information legislation.
Canada’s Access to Information Act, first adopted in 1982, requires federal government departments, agencies and crown corporations to release public records to anyone who makes a request and pays a $5 fee.
But Legault, the federal information commissioner, said the legislation should no longer have exclusions that prevent her office from reviewing all files when officials decide to withhold information in categories such as federal cabinet secrets, nuclear safety issues, as well as professional information related to CBC journalism or programming activities.
“Exclusions are, in my view, arcane in matters of access to information if one looks at international standards,” Legault said Thursday. “I think that when we first enacted an Access to Information Act in 1982, we were considered to be leaders around the world, and now we are considered to be laggards and I don’t think that any Canadian should be happy with this situation.”
Legault has not proposed to remove all exemptions that allow government departments and agencies to withhold some information in records. In these cases, her office would still have the ability to review whether the exemptions were applied appropriately.
The exemptions now allow government officials to withhold information in a range of categories such as matters under consultation within government, personal records, or issues regarding national security.
She noted that a recent evaluation of freedom of information legislation around the world ranked Canada 55th out of about 100 countries.
Her latest report, winding up a series that examined delays in the response to access requests, praised the CBC, awarding it with an “A” for dramatically improving its response times. But it criticized Canada Post, giving it an “F” for failing to correct a system that is slow in its responses.
Both institutions were added to the Access to Information Act in 2007.
She suggested that the latter has failed to address concerns that delays are occurring because the crown corporation requires substantive decisions on files to be reviewed by either a general manager or a vicepresident.
Regarding the CBC, she declined to comment on a report broadcast this week by the French-language TVA television network that quoted a former CBC executive who suggested some managers were trying to avoid being subject to the law.
In a statement, a CBC spokesman, Angus McKinnon said that the executive in question abruptly left as chairman of the board before it became subject to the act under a completely different management.
The CBC’s current president, Hubert Lacroix, said that it had a “tough start” when it was first added to the legislation, but that it had “worked hard to turn the ship around.”