A shrinking landscape for transparency
Fewer Canadians bothering to file access-to-information requests
The federal government this week dumped its load of annual statistics about citizens’ use of the Access to Information Act.
The numbers usually arrive like sludge just before Christmas, well after Parliament has recessed, and when no one is paying attention. There’s no analysis, just a blizzard of spreadsheet data that’s already nine months out of date.
Information Commissioner Caroline Maynard earlier this year complained about the slow delivery of results, noting that Scotland releases its statistics every three months. Her admonition was to no avail.
Despite the stale numbers, several trends are unmistakable.
First, there’s been a massive drop in the total number of access requests that citizens filed, to about 34,000 in 2024-25 from 47,000 the year before, and from 52,000 the year before that. That’s a decline of more than a third over two years.
The shrinkage is partly linked to the 2020 pandemic, which triggered a surge in requests for documentation about what the government was doing to meet the health crisis. But as the COVID emergency fades it’s unclear why the numbers keep falling.
One explanation may be an abysmal on-time performance. The Act sets out clear timelines for responses to requests, but the latest stats show the government is violating those legal deadlines more than 35 per cent of the time, its worst showing ever. Public-affairs information generally has a best-before date, and if requesters are routinely served up stale documents, some may have decided not to waste time even asking for them.
Another trend: in 2024-25, more than a quarter of requests completed resulted in no information released, about the same level as last year. These dud requests are more numerous than in any previous period, again suggesting requesters may have good reasons to throw in the towel.
One bright spot is the media, which filed almost 5,600 requests, a number slightly higher than the two previous years. The absolute numbers have held steady even in the face of a general decline in citizens’ use of the Access to Information Act, and despite a collapsing news industry.
As a requester, I often hear about the limited resources that departments are provided to process Access to Information Act requests. That claim is usually made to explain chronically poor service.
But this year’s numbers show a record $118 million spent on processing requests, even as the numbers of requests coming through the door have slumped by a third. Surely fewer requests + more money must mean better service? But service in fact is worse, as measured by the late delivery of records and other metrics.
The government, though, has yet another explanation. The information commissioner has been issuing too many orders to recalcitrant departments, requiring them to turn over requested documents, a power she was first given in 2019. Maynard issued 375 such orders in 2024-25 alone, and bureaucrats are chafing at the administrative burden of complying with them. That’s why there’s an ominous move afoot inside government to strip away some of her powers.
The Access to Information Act requires a thorough review every five years, and the government “launched” the latest review in June. In fact, there’s been a failure to launch. A public consultation process that was to begin in the fall is inexplicably stalled. The government has gone silent about next steps.
In the end, we have a government with a deteriorating performance record, with little interest in reforming access to information, and with every motivation to further restrict the public’s right to hold officials to account.
Update Jan. 30, 2026: Since this post was published, I received a Nov. 4, 2025, document from Treasury Board that claims the sharp drop in total access-to-information requests received in 2024-25 compared with the previous year (down 27.6 per cent) is “mainly due to decreases in requests received by the Canada Border Services Agency [CBSA], as more requests are being submitted to the department as personal information requests under the PA [Privacy Act] rather than access to information requests.” This explanation - that privacy requests are displacing access requests - was extracted only because of an access request I made, and was not part of Treasury Board’s report to Parliament. It should have been included. In recent years, CBSA has received a lot of requests from would-be migrants who want updates on their status, which has been an inappropriate use of the Access to Information Act and has distorted year-end statistics.