At a recent meeting of Canadian freedom of information (FOI) researchers and advocates, the series of changes to provincial access legislation over the past year was called a race to the bottom.

Last fall, Nova Scotia’s Progressive Conservative government rushed a wholesale restructuring of the province’s right to know law by amending its purpose clause – key wording for interpretation by courts and quasi-judicial tribunals – and by changing the time allowed for responding to a request from calendar days to business days, effectively lengthening that period.

In March, Ontario’s Progressive Conservative government made a series of controversial changes. Premier Doug Ford said he needed to protect the privacy of citizens who text him – even though every FOI law in Canada already contains provisions for that kind of communication. Ontario also extended the timeline for responses to 45 business days from 30 calendar days.

In May, B.C.’s NDP government introduced Bill-9, a substantive amendment to the province’s law that legalizes taking longer to respond to requests, if an applicant consents.

What’s common across this race to the bottom? First, the amendments all included something to affect the timeliness of responses. Second, the word “modern” or variants of it appears in all three governments’ rhetoric. That’s not a coincidence.

The Supreme Court of Canada afforded FOI quasi-constitutional status 15 years ago. But you wouldn’t know that from the way FOI is talked about inside government. Bureaucracies are far too focused on efficiency and not nearly enough on delivering the correct response. That needs to change.

For three years, I led a study for the Freedom of Information and Privacy Association into how the system works after someone files a request in B.C.. We looked at 56 public bodies – every ministry, plus the broader public sector bodies subject to FOI law and the province’s recordkeeping legislation, the Information Management Act.

Over two years, five requests were........

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