Freedom of information in Canada
In Canada, the Access to Information Act allows citizens to demand records from federal bodies. The 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. This is enforced by the Information Commissioner of Canada.
There is also a complementary Privacy Act that was introduced in 1983. The purpose of the Privacy Act is 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. Complaints for possible violations of the Act may be reported to the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.
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. Each province and territory in Canada has its own access to information legislation. In many cases, this is also the provincial public sector privacy legislation. For example:
-
Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (Alberta)
-
Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (Manitoba)
-
Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (Nova Scotia)
-
Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (Ontario)
-
Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (Saskatchewan)
-
Act respecting access to documents held by public bodies and the protection of personal information (Quebec)
From 1989 to 2008, requests made to the federal government were catalogued in the Coordination of Access to Information Requests System.
A 393-page report released in September 2008, sponsored by several Canadian newspaper groups, compares Canada’s Access to Information Act to the FOI laws of the provinces and of 68 other nations.
In 2009, The Walrus (magazine) published a detailed history of FOI in Canada.