Ottawa censors majority of Access to Information requests
Toronto Star analysis of 28,000 requests over a one-year period finds a majority are sent back with information redacted.

thestar.com
July 8, 2015
By Laurent Bastien Corbeil

Federal agencies censored the majority of government records requested under the Access to Information Act last year, a Star analysis of tens of thousands of requests shows.

Out of 28,000 requests filed between June 2013 and July 2014, only 21 per cent were returned free of redactions, according to data obtained from the government’s open information portal. Fifty-seven per cent were censored in some way.

The government said it could not find records 18 per cent of the time.

CSIS was by far the most secretive agency. During the one-year period, the intelligence service did not fully release a single government file, the data shows. The Privy Council Office followed closely behind, with staffers fully fulfilling only 3 per cent of the requests.

That is in sharp contrast with U.S federal agencies, which grant full access to government records at a far higher rate.

Only 26 per cent of requests sent to Environment Canada were left uncensored. In comparison, the full disclosure rate last year for its U.S counterpart, the Environmental Protection Agency, was 88 per cent, according to the Center for Effective Government.

Of the 15 U.S departments profiled by the Washington-based think tank, 10 fully disclosed more than half of all documents requested. No major federal agency in Canada crossed the 50 per cent mark.

For critics, who have long assailed the country’s Access to Information regime for its ineffectiveness and wait times, the new figures come as no surprise.

“That statistic is every bit as damning as it sounds,” Tom Henheffer, the executive director of Canadian Journalists for Free Expression, told the Star.

“The United States Freedom of Information system is far, far superior to our Access to Information system. A lot of reporters, if there’s some kind of international trade thing or something going cross-border between Canada and the United States, they’ll try and file (a request) in Canada and they won’t get anything back. They file in the United States and they’ll have all the information they requested within a couple of weeks.”

Obviously some information, Henheffer said, should be withheld to protect trade secrets and national security. But the liberal use of redactions by government agencies is evidence of a “widespread clampdown on information in Canada.”

“It’s very easy for the government to censor anything that could potentially make them look bad,” he said.

On average, only 2 per cent of the 28,000 requests were outright denied. But the rate was much higher at law enforcement and national security agencies, with the RCMP refusing to disclose any information 9 per cent of the time and CSIS 8 per cent.

At the other end of the spectrum, 40 per cent of the requests filed to Library and Archives Canada were fully fulfilled, the highest of all major federal agencies.

In an email Monday, Environment Canada defended its right to redact government records, saying a significant number of documents processed “include personal information of individuals who are non-government employees,” which must be withheld in accordance with the act.

“Environment Canada takes Canadians’ right of access to information very seriously and does so while abiding by the provisions of the Access to Information Act,” said spokesperson Danny Kingsberry. “Decisions on whether to release the information in a request are made by non-partisan, professional public servants.”

But the government’s open data portal, on which the Star’s analysis is based, does not include requests that “focus on personal information or third party proprietary.”

And when all inquiries are taken into account, Environment Canada’s full disclosure rate for last year drops to as low as 11 per cent, according to its annual Access to Information report to Parliament.

That information - the overall number of requests - is not made available to the public by all agencies. Obtaining the figures from National Defence, for instance, requires the filing of a formal Access to Information request: a lengthy process.

In June, it was revealed that some government departments had outstanding requests dating back to 2009 after Liberal MP David McGuinty asked for a list of the five oldest inquiries.