Media abandoning access-to-info
New report shows continued decline in use of transparency law
A new report says that over the last year, members of the media filed 5,339 Access to Information Act requests. That works out to more than 14 each day in 2022-23.
The number may sound large, but it’s actually a sign of big trouble: it’s the lowest level of media use of the transparency legislation in at least 10 years.
In the previous year, 5,855 requests were from media; the year before that, 6,698; the year before, 6,886. So the numbers march ever downward, even as general use of the Act climbs.
The trend is unmistakable. Media requestors now represent a bare 2.6 per cent of all requests filed. A decade ago, the level was about 14 per cent.
The new report, Treasury Board’s annual tally on the use of the Act, has some statistical pitfalls. “Media” is never clearly defined, for instance. The report contains no analysis of the various categories of requestors. And a single department, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), distorts the numbers, receiving 78 per cent of all requests in 2022-23, because of a misleading clerical work-around.
Despite the methodological cautions, it’s clear the media are abandoning the Act in droves. Why?
Cost is not an issue – since May 2016, processing costs have been locked at zero. And the $5 application fee has not budged since 1983. The federal government has also made it easier to file online. Last year, 230,000 requests arrived through its online portal, compared with 4,600 by Canada Post. In other words, it’s cheaper and easier than ever to file.
Rather, delays seem to be driving away journalists who, after all, now work in a pressure-cooker of minute-to-minute digital deadlines.
The report says federal departments violated legal deadlines for 28 per cent of all requests they received (and those deadlines are already tilted in favour of government). The report says 3,800 requests took more than six months to get a response – and you can bet many of those were for journalists. You can also bet many were heavily redacted.
Delays are now so endemic that the typical young journalist can’t be certain of working for the same newsroom as when she or he filed the original request. And news has a best-before date, so access delayed is access denied.
A government genuinely committed to transparency – and to supporting the Canadian news ecosystem – would find ways to grease the wheels of freedom-of-information. But most governments are secretly committed to secrecy, and the chronically slow processing of requests fits the bill nicely.