Access to Information Act
| Access to Information Act | |
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| An Act to extend the present laws of Canada that provide access to information under the control of the Government of Canada | |
| Citation | Access to Information Act (R.S.C., 1985, c. A-1), last amended on 2014-07-01 |
| Enacted by | Parliament of Canada |
| Date assented to | 1985 |
Access to Information Act (R.S., 1985, c. A-1) or Information Act (French: Loi sur l’accès à l’information) is a Canadian Act providing the right of access to information under the control of a federal government institution. Paragraph 2. (1) of the Act ("Purpose") declares that government information should be available to the public, but with necessary exceptions to the right of access that should be limited and specific, and that decisions on the disclosure of government information should be reviewed independently of government. Later paragraphs assign responsibility for this review to an Information Commissioner, who reports directly to parliament rather than the government in power. However, the Act provides the commissioner the power only to recommend rather than compel the release of requested information that the commissioner judges to be not subject to any exception specified in the Act.
By 1982, Australia, Denmark, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, and the U.S. (1966), had enacted modern Freedom of information legislation. Canada's Access to Information Act came into force in 1983, under the Pierre Trudeau government, permitting Canadians to retrieve information from government files, establishing what information could be accessed, mandating timelines for response. By the standards of that era, it came to be considered a model of good practice, having taken the implementation of the law more seriously than other countries. The Act created new offices staffed with trained professionals to manage the inflow of requests, and developed formal procedures to encourage prompt processing of requests. Furthermore, the Information Commissioner served as an easily accessible ombudsperson to arbitrate cases of possible maladministration.
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