It’s “Right to Know” week in Canada. It is off to an interesting
start. Canada’s Information Commissioner, Suzanne Legault,
announcement in her Annual Report that she will be engaging in a
public dialogue as she prepares to make recommendations to
Parliament to revise Canada’s access to information laws (even
as the budget for her office has been slashed). The federal
Access to Information Act is 30 years old. Nova Scotia and New
Brunswick can claim bragging rights to the oldest access to
information legislation in Canada, dating from 1977 and 1978
respectively. In most jurisdictions in Canada, there have been
no major revisions to access to information laws (1) to account
for the volumes of electronic data, public-private partnerships,
and Crown and shared governance corporations that have burgeoned
in the decades that have followed or (2) to account for the
opportunities that information technologies present for sharing
that data with citizens. However, governments across Canada are
increasingly embracing t