Official Records Only? Carney’s ATI Rewrite Needs a Receipts Ledger

Ottawa says it wants faster, clearer access-to-information rules. Fine. Start by proving the rewrite will not let departments define inconvenient records out of existence.

The Carney government’s access-to-information review deserves close scrutiny because the dangerous part is not hidden in a scandal headline. It is sitting in policy language about “official repositories,” “official records” and “transitory” material.

Treasury Board’s 2025 review paper floats a duty to document government decisions in official repositories, then canvasses updating the definition of a record so that the Access to Information Act focuses on “official records” held in those repositories. The paper itself says the effect would be to remove transitory records from the Act’s scope. That is not a housekeeping change. It is a power shift.

In practice, the public right to know often depends on messy records: emails, texts, drafts, notes, message threads and internal exchanges that show what officials knew, when they knew it, and how a decision changed. If government gets to narrow the search universe before Canadians ask the question, the access right becomes whatever the department has chosen to preserve.

Supporters will say this is about discipline: make officials file the important material properly, reduce clutter, speed responses and stop fishing expeditions. Those goals are not unreasonable. Anyone who has watched Ottawa miss deadlines knows the current system is broken.

But the conservative accountability test is simple: reform should make government easier to audit, not easier to curate. A duty to document is only meaningful if failure has consequences. An official repository is only trustworthy if independent reviewers can inspect what was excluded. A “transitory” label is only safe if it cannot become a convenient shredder for embarrassment, waste or political direction.

The Information Commissioner has already expressed reservations about moving toward an “official records” model. Access advocates have warned the same thing: the definition of the record is the heart of the right. Once Ottawa narrows that definition, every later promise about transparency rests on bureaucratic discretion.

Before any bill is tabled, Parliament should demand an ATI rewrite ledger. Publish the submissions. Publish the Commissioner’s warnings. Publish department-by-department retention rules. Show examples of emails, texts, drafts and briefing notes that would remain requestable — and examples that would not. Explain who audits repositories, who investigates missing records, and what penalties apply when public business is kept outside the system.

Canadians do not need another openness slogan. They need proof that the receipts will still exist after the rewrite.