Secret Canada
About me
Tom Cardoso, investigative reporter
at The Globe and Mail (and FOI power user)
Using FOI to investigate FOI.
Secret Canada was an exhaustive examination of Canada’s broken FOI systems, and the culmination of 18 months of investigative work. More than 1,000 FOIs, 200+ interviews and 100+ stories, blog posts and newsletters.
A project in two parts:
- An investigation
- A website
Investigation
Our reporting revealed that public institutions skirt FOI laws by overusing redactions, failing to meet legislated timelines and claiming “no records” exist when they do. And these institutions face few – if any – consequences for ignoring the precedents set by courts and information commissioners.
Some of our stories have looked at:
- Why FOI in Canada is broken, in a general sense
- How federal FOI has been hijacked by the immigration system
- Canada’s “island of transparency”: the province of Newfoundland
- How other countries’ FOI systems work
- The toothlessness of watchdog bodies responsible for overseeing these laws
- The near-impossibility of accessing historical records via ATIP
- The lack of consequences for those breaking FOI laws
- The state of municipal FOI regimes
Website (secretcanada.com)
- A database of more than 400,000 completed FOI summaries for 600+ federal, provincial, territorial and municipal public bodies
- Educational material, including detailed guides on filing FOIs, navigating the system and appealing decisions
- A blog
Our database was constructed from hundreds of FOIs, filed to every major public body in the country. Ministries, municipalities, police, hospitals, universities, Crown corporations… the list goes on. And we’re currently filing our next round!
Impact
But also…
- 400,000+ visits to our website with FOI guides and database
- 20,000+ FOI letters generated using our tools
Generally speaking, the FOI system is not doing well.
Aging legislation
Response times aren’t what they should be
Everyone redacts at different rates
And the redactions are frequently unreasonable!
Commissioners are often disregarded
And governments are interpreting FOI law “creatively”
