Alberta denying information requests is worrying

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It’s a poor showing by Alberta. And yes, the province does stick out like a sore thumb.

I’m not talking about any economic, environmental or political indicator. The Globe and Mail is wont to find those types of things lacking in the province, every now and then. What I’m referring to is Alberta’s performance when it comes to freedom of information. What a Globe investigation found should be worrying for everyone in Alberta who cares about government accountability and transparency.

In all of Canada, Alberta can now claim to be the government most adept at stonewalling. For The Globe’s Secret Canada project, the paper’s investigative reporters sent freedom of information requests to every federal, territorial and provincial department and ministry in Canada, to examine their performance on access and transparency. The requests asked for data fields from the internal systems each institution uses to track when freedom of information requests were received, when they were completed and whether information was provided.

Every jurisdiction supplied information except Alberta, where all 22 ministries denied The Globe’s requests, claiming “no records” existed, even though the province has a tracking system for these metrics. When pressed to explain this, government officials said that while they do have the information, producing it in an electronic or machine-readable format would require them to “create a record,” which they argued is outside the scope of their legal obligations.

A year ago, when Alberta began declining The Globe’s requests, a reporter had many conversations with several FOI co-ordinators about the “no records” explanation and potential workarounds – up to and including a physical printout of the tracking system – but no ministry would budge. It seems someone was testing the limits of the letter of the law in Alberta’s Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.

At some point, officials realized there was a problem with this strategy. “Two days before publication, senior bureaucrats with the province reached out and asked if it was too late to contribute something to the project. It was,” wrote Tom Cardoso and Robyn Doolittle in their backstory on the investigation.

Alberta’s current Information and Privacy Commissioner, Diane McLeod, told The Globe the outcome was very unfortunate. “I think it is a poor representation for Alberta,” she said. Jill Clayton, who served as commissioner for 10 years, until 2022, said “Alberta sticks out like a sore thumb.”

To be clear, other jurisdictions didn’t pass the audit with flying colours. The Globe’s project has revealed that public institutions across the country are routinely breaking freedom of information laws by overusing redactions and failing to meet statutory timelines, with the federal government and Ontario having the longest response times.

But the fact that Alberta wouldn’t even participate, after months of attempts to convince it to do so, won’t be surprising to anyone who has tried to get information through official channels here. Seven years ago, when Ms. Clayton was still the information and privacy commissioner, she said “access to information in Alberta is fast approaching a crisis situation.” She said she hadn’t been given hard data on the number of information requests or response times, but that she was hearing from an increasing number of applicants who hadn’t received timely responses, or any responses.

In Ms. Clayton’s last report as commissioner, in 2021-22, she said the crisis still existed. “These issues cry out for urgent attention,” she wrote.

Journalists are heavy users of freedom of information laws. Globe reporter Alanna Smith used a freedom of information request to write about the fact that the province was planning the first involuntary treatment law in Canada to target addiction specifically. Others have been less successful at getting information. Canadian Press reporter Bob Weber has battled to get the Alberta government to release records about toxic contaminants in snowpacks downwind from British Columbia coal mines.

Like other governments, Alberta’s faces an array of requests for information on subjects that include health care, justice and high political scandal. But the industrialized nature of Alberta’s economy, and the massive impacts on the province’s air, water and landscape, mean it faces an exceptional amount of scrutiny from environmentalists and journalists. Some in government have taken on a defensive posture.

The results of The Globe’s freedom of information investigation will lead to a further discussion of how beholden the Alberta government is to the industries that make the province the economic powerhouse it is. One of the clearest past examples of this was in the structure of the Canadian Energy Centre – otherwise known as the “war room” – a government advocacy agency for the energy sector created by former premier Jason Kenney.

The war room was formed as a private corporation rather than a Crown agency, a deliberate tactic by the government to shield it from freedom of information laws. This goes against the spirit of those laws, which are meant to provide a level of accountability for public expenditures.

And to be sure, concern about access to government information isn’t limited to one political outlook. Ms. Clayton has said both Alberta’s Opposition NDP and the Canadian Taxpayers Federation have written her asking for investigations into delays in the release of records. Those groups have also raised concerns about political interference in the processing of access requests.

A key pillar of trust in government is people believing it doesn’t have anything to hide. This week, Premier Danielle Smith said she has read The Globe’s report and has asked a deputy minister to look into what went wrong. She also noted the freedom of information requests went in as there was “a lot of upheaval in government.” Her United Conservative Party was in the process of a leadership review that would lead to Mr. Kenney’s resignation.

To be clear, a partisan leadership race shouldn’t have had anything to do with the speed of responses to freedom of information requests. But the Premier’s commitment to look at the process and what went wrong at least holds out the possibility that Alberta’s system could be improved, and will no longer stick out like a sore thumb.

With a report from Alanna Smith

Secret Canada: More from The Globe and Mail

Video: How to file an FOI request

Podcast: Robyn Doolittle and Tom Cardoso on The Decibel

Reader callout: Share your FOI stories