Bureaucrats and politicians in the United States and Canada alike appear to actively despise freedom of information laws and turn to the exact same pack of tricks to keep their actions concealed and prevent them from being revealed to citizens.
Overcharging, by way of example, is a common technique in both nations to keep the “government of the shadows” operating (if you can’t afford to pay, they reason, you won’t play and then they won’t have to turn over the information).
“It’s a slow secrecy. They make people wait for it, until maybe they forget about it or until the information is irrelevant.”
In the Canadian province of Manitoba, those filing requests via the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA) shelled out over $13,000 in the last fiscal year—more than three times the previous year’s total and more than 10 times the total from the year before that.
Manitobans receive two free hours of staff search and processing time when they submit freedom of information requests. But after that, rates leap to $30 an hour. And it’s easy to boost the bill—just raise the amount of staff time, whether actual or not.
But wait a minute—don’t we all pay taxes? Don’t we pay those bureaucrats’ salaries? Don’t they work for us?
One group wanted public housing records, for example, but were told it would cost them $15,190.
“Higher fees could discourage requests from individuals who do not have access to discretionary income for such a purpose,” said Paul Thomas, a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Manitoba.
Exactly—and that’s the point, right? In fact, that’s why it’s done.
In Manitoba, the legal requirement of responding to requests within 45 days is apparently viewed more as an annoying suggestion than a requirement—because, last year, only 55 percent of requests were answered within that legally mandated window. Some 24 percent were answered within 46 to 75 days, and 21 percent took even longer.
Long delays are called “slowrolling”—take forever to answer a request for information (even if it’s against the law) and hope those pesky citizens will just get tired of waiting and leave you alone.
“It’s a slow secrecy. They make people wait for it, until maybe they forget about it or until the information is irrelevant,” Kevin Walby, director of the Centre for Access to Information and Justice at the University of Winnipeg, said. “The more ‘slow secrecy’ goes up, the more [public] trust goes down.”
In 2024–2025, government agencies say they received 1,861 requests and completed 1,243 requests, granting “in full” the information requested in only 308 cases. They granted only partial information in response to 513 requests, responded “access denied—no records” to 316, and replied “access denied—exceptions to disclosure” to 71 requests.
Then, it gets even trickier: 35 requests fell into the “other” category, including refusals to “confirm or deny” that the information exists at all, or whether the government has it.
Well, we yankees have heard that one before. Down here, it’s called the “Glomar response,” after the infamous Glomar Explorer ship owned by Howard Hughes and built for the top-secret Project Azorian, an undercover attempt to recover a sunken Soviet submarine. (The effort had limited success, but was shrouded in such secrecy that it gave birth to the Glomar response.)
After all, if the government can claim the information is so sensitive that they can’t even admit it exists, then they can’t be forced to provide it, can they?
So much effort to hide—but from whom? Who wants this information in Manitoba anyway? Well, a government report says that in 2024–2025, 254 requests came from political parties, 896 from individuals and 355 from the press.
“Journalism plays such a critical role in our society in terms of upholding the freedom of speech, the ability of citizens to express themselves and, really importantly, to hold the powerful to account, including government,” Wab Kinew, the premier of Manitoba, said.
Here’s how that worked out: In spite of calls to do so, the government declined to search a landfill for the bodies of two murder victims. Senior bureaucrats had apparently put together a slide presentation for cabinet ministers on what that search process would have looked like.
But when the press tried to access the presentation, they were turned down. “Newsrooms in Manitoba and critics of government transparency alike have often complained about the wall of secrecy that seems to be built into Manitoba’s freedom of information laws,” The Brandon Sun wrote in an editorial on the matter. “The public’s right to know important information is not taken into account when decisions on releasing information are made by the province.”
Frankly, they need to take a can opener to the whole government, and start letting Canadian citizens see what they have a right to see.
Likewise, when the 2023–2024 report on FIPPA was released, the Winnipeg Free Press reported: “There’s been no progress on speeding up replies, no record-collection fees were waived during the latest fiscal year, and publicly funded authorities collected three times the total year-over-year fees to process requests.”
Manitoba isn’t the only province where access to public information is stifled. In Alberta, when a group of ranchers sought information on changes in coal policy, after extensive delays, Alberta Energy gave them only 30 records out of 6,539.
When the ranchers fought back, the government went to court to block release of the information. Justice Kent Teskey denied the government’s request.
“Every Albertan is entitled to a broad right of access to the records of their government,” he wrote. “This is an essential pillar of a functional democracy.… It has been famously said that ‘democracy dies in darkness.’ If public bodies are unwilling or unable to comply with their timely obligations under [freedom of information laws], they should expect that Courts may apply a high level of scrutiny on the availability of judicial review in the future.”
The Brandon Sun urges changes to Manitoba’s FIPPA laws, including adopting a public interest clause and giving the province’s ombudsman authority to “compel a public body to release a record, instead of merely making recommendations.”
Good ideas. They should do that—and more, much more. Frankly, they need to take a can opener to the whole government, and start letting Canadian citizens see what they have a right to see.
The Church of Scientology has long been a fierce advocate of freedom of information, inspired by Scientology Founder L. Ron Hubbard’s famous words: “Democracy depends exclusively on the informedness of the individual citizen.”
Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis echoed the sentiment. “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants,” he said, “electric light the most efficient policeman.”
So let’s switch on the lights up north.
