This is not a subject that will mobilize citizens en masse, but it is one that affects everyone and particularly points to the health of our democracy: it is the quality of access to information . Various recent signals, from both Quebec and Canada, tend to suggest that the transparency of our departments, institutions and public bodies leaves something to be desired, which is very worrying.
In a healthy democracy worthy of the name, citizens, journalists and interested groups should have easy and open access to all types of information allowing them to understand the way in which the State makes its decisions, on what it is based and what is the key evidence that explains why an organization made one choice over another. The laws supporting this principle of access to information enshrine the obligation, for any entity targeted by a request, to provide a response within 20 (Quebec) or 30 (Canada) days. Exceeding this crucial timely response period is a direct refusal to disclose information.
However, according to a very recent report published by the Commission d’accès à l’information du Québec — Having access in good time: Profile of processing times for access requests in Quebec —, one-third of government departments and agencies exceed the legal deadlines. It is not insignificant. Some cases are aberrant, such as that of the Ministry of Education, which did not meet processing times in 81% of cases in 2020-2021. For a ministry of such importance, whose role is to direct the perseverance and academic success of students, it is a real shame.
The journalistic community has a lot to say about the failures of the access to information laws, which we come to imagine that they aim – in their application at least – to restrict access to the documents requested rather than to facilitate it. . Some recent cases have caught on: such as the initial refusal of the Government of Quebec to broadcast the ethical opinion that served as the basis for the imposition of the curfew of December 30, 2021. Radio-Canada journalist Thomas Gerbet received from first a completely redacted document, a real snub, and it was the pressure created by his decision to distribute the blacked-out pages on social networks that finally gave rise, 24 hours later, to the publication of the opinion… unfavorable to the keeping a curfew. This type of event, which fuels discussions around the coffee machine in newsrooms, ends up suggesting that the Law on Access to Documents Held by Public Bodies, which turned 40 this year, serves to protect the image of information holders rather than to provide transparent accountability.
The situation is no rosier on the federal side, where even Judge Paul Rouleau, who chairs the Commission on the state of emergency, said he had difficulty accessing certain documents that were nevertheless necessary. This was exactly the observation made, at the beginning of the month, by parliamentarians who were members of the special joint committee on the declaration of a crisis situation, stunned to have received hundreds of pages of incomplete documents, redacted in passages, and this , without any justification, in addition to having no idea what could have been excluded as thorny information. Among other breaches of Quebec and federal laws, the total absence of a list of the type of sensitive information to be excluded is to be deplored. It’s literally like looking for a needle in a haystack, not knowing the size of the haystack.
In Quebec, the last project to overhaul the Act dates back to 2018, when the government of Philippe Couillard very nearly adopted his bill 179 to modernize the devices. Among other things, it provided for a reduction in the periods during which documents are inaccessible, a mechanism for justifying refusals, a strengthening of the penal provisions in the event of a breach and the adoption of a plan for the proactive dissemination of information within the institutions concerned. These initiatives have not seen the light of day, but they remain more necessary than ever.