Public health and safety are just not a priority on the federal transparency front

Access to crucial viral Ebola data has been denied for more than 12 years.

Mismanaging our past while repeating mistakes does not make for a transparent Canada

Nobody in Ottawa wants to guarantee records would be released in a timely fashion, let alone that historic records will be quickly declassified.

Privacy invasions being helped along by lackadaisical legislatures  

We are headed further down the golden-brick road to more privacy invasions drawn from giant personal metadata pools by both government and corporate surveillance teams.

Will Carney’s majority government usher in a costly era of privacy invasion?

Privacy protection continues to rate high in public polling. Yet recent legislative moves are violating that trust, and throwing personal data protection out the window.

Treasury Board wants to ‘modernize’ Privacy Act by legalizing more personal data reuses, sharing

It would in effect turn the Privacy Act into a data integration act where citizens have less say over use of their personal information.

Here’s how the Ford government is sending its public’s right-to-information laws to the bottom of Canada’s FOI pit

The Ontario government’s proposed changes tear apart the foundation of the 1988 Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, but, federally, we may not be too far behind.

Feds want the public to agree to more regressive access-to-information rules in ongoing review

The Treasury Board wants to ignore the basic faults with current access, and award itself by cutting away more records and having fewer orders and users.

Exposing the feds’ growing use of AI tools that help keep the rigid access-to-information status quo

The AI tools are designed to be used defensively to uphold secrecy positions, and to possibly contain the federal information commissioner’s efforts at ordering more timely releases.

Senator’s anti-non-disclosure agreement bill faces roadblocks      

Banning NDAs or releasing those with such agreements does not appear to be in the cards, but victims want relief.

Documents reveal more about powerful forces behind push for warrantless lawful access

The pressure for lawful warrantless access to surveil internet subscriber data is long-standing and began in the late 1990s. But recently acquired access-to-information documents shed some light on some of the actors driving the push for more lawful access.

Driving accountability when AI has its hand on the wheel

In a world of co-pilots and chat bots, this public interest researcher feels the growing impacts of artificial intelligence.

Federal environmental impact assessments are in even more jeopardy   

The federal environment assessment tool was always limited, with powerful enemies fighting back well before the Carney government wanted to curtail its usage.

Off to a bad start: Treasury Board already wants to make access to information worse

With Treasury Board once again handling the first stage of the ATI review, you can be sure of more delays, more exemptions proposed, and more people being excluded from using access to information. 

Government agencies are hardly trying when it comes to transparency

We have a very tenuous and shaky situation with increasing setbacks in disclosures, and more creative avoidance, delays, and denials.

Demystifying the detection of fraud and coerced victims

The public needs to know about incidents involving the fraudulent use of social benefits, and about how fraudsters forcefully exploit and draw others into their operations.

The critical-minerals battle is being fought on land—and over the sea

Internal documents give the impression Canada would gladly abandon its current support for a seabed-mining moratorium if some standards were in place.