Access To Information Act - Proposed Changes

Proposed Changes

In 1987, the Solicitor General of Canada tabled a unanimous report to Parliament, Open and Shut: Enhancing the Right to Know and the Right to Privacy which contained over 100 recommendations for amending the ATI and privacy acts.

In 1998, the government would append a clause to the Access Act, making it a federal offence to destroy, falsify, or conceal public documents.

In August 2000, the Ministry of Justice and the president of the Treasury Board launched a task force to review the Access Act. The committee’s report, delivered in June 2002, found “a crisis in information management” within government.

Université de Moncton professor Donald Savoie’s 2003 book, Breaking the Bargain, argues that in Canada there is a reluctance to put anything in writing, including e-mail, that might find its way into public discourse.

In the fall of 2003, John Bryden, attempted to initiate a comprehensive overhaul of the Act through a private members bill, Bill C-462, which died on the Order Paper with the dissolution of the 37th Parliament in May 2004. A similar bill was introduced by NDP MP Pat Martin on 7 October 2004 as Bill C-201.

In April 2005, the Justice Minister Irwin Cotler introduced a discussion paper entitled A Comprehensive Framework for Access to Information Reform.

In September 2008, a 393 page report sponsored by several Canadian newspaper groups, compared Canada’s Access to Information Act to the FOI laws of the provinces and of 68 other nations titled: .

In October 2010, an international comparison of access to government information ranked Canada last; a significant change from only a decade before when the country often served as a model for freedom of information internationally. The University College London study comparing Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Ireland was published in Government Information Quarterly.