GOLDSTEIN: Trudeau’s pledge of open access to government info in ruins

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Among all of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s broken promises, the most cynical has been the abandonment of his pledge in the 2015 election campaign that brought him to power, to deliver open and transparent government to Canadians.

“Government data and information should be open by default in formats that are modern and easy to use,” the Liberals promised in 2015.

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“Data paid for by Canadians belongs to Canadians. We will restore trust in our democracy and that begins with trusting Canadians. We will make government information more accessible. We will update the Access to Information Act to meet this standard …”

“We will ensure that Access to Information applies to the Prime Minister’s and Minister’s offices … We will make it easier for Canadians to access their own information. Canadians have a right to their personal information held by the government.”

Nine years later, these promises lie in ruins.

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Other than limiting the cost to the public of requesting information from the federal government under the access law to $5, plus a few other minor reforms in 2019, Trudeau and the Liberals appear to have little interest in fixing an access to information system that is in chaos, other than to review the much-criticized legislation again in 2025.

In October 2023, federal Information Commissioner Caroline Maynard reported that despite the fact the access to information law passed in 1983 “is outdated and no longer meets the expectations or needs of Canadians … the response from the government is clear. There is no legislative change on the horizon. Frankly, Canadians deserve much better.”

In her 2022-23 annual report released in June 2023, Maynard said the access to information system had deteriorated “to the point where it no longer serves its intended purpose.”

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In her 2021-22 annual report released in June 2022, she said it was unacceptable that the Trudeau government was still using the COVID-19 pandemic as an excuse for ignoring reporting deadlines in the legislation.

In May 2021, following an investigation of access to information requests submitted by the public to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), Maynard said the system was antiquated and overwhelmed.

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She reported that in 2019-20, the fiscal year before the pandemic hit, IRCC received 116,928 access to information requests – compared to 39,294 for all other government institutions combined – and only succeeded in processing half of them (51%) within the required 30 days.

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Maynard said there were 4,298 complaints to her office from the public that year alone about how long it was taking IRCC to process requests for information, the most by far for any government agency, leading to a backlog of unresolved complaints across the entire system.

In a follow-up report earlier this month, Maynard said the backlog in access to information requests to the IRCC has been compounded by a new backlog of requests to the Canadian Border Services Agency, which has access to the same data.

Maynard said Canadians should not have to go through the access to information process at all to receive information about themselves or relatives – that information should be available to them online as a matter of routine.

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These chronic delays aren’t just administrative foul-ups. They cause real heartaches and hardships to people.

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In January, I did a story about a Canadian family whose mother died still waiting for information from the IRCC to complete her application for permanent residence in Canada – 19 months after the request was made in June 2022, and four months after she died in September 2023.

Maynard says, “The Access to Information Act was never meant as a substitute for providing individuals what they need and expect from the federal government: timely access to the information they need to make decisions that affect them.

“This information should be made available to them directly, through modern digital service delivery methods.”

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Last week, Maynard testified before the Commons committee on access to information that the government has cut her office budget by 5% ($700,000), further limiting its ability to address complaints from the public about the government’s lack of timely responses to inquiries under the access to information law.

The government says the cut is based on a formula to help compensate for negotiated salary increases within the public service, but in the real world, $700,000 is chump change to a government that spent $60 million on an ArriveCan app that was supposed to cost $80,000 to develop.

The more likely explanation is that the Trudeau government has decided to ignore repeated warnings and complaints that the federal access to information system is in chaos and to undermine Maynard’s efforts to improve it.

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