Canadian universities often fail to meet access to information requirements, leaving their students in the dark.
From January 2021 to May 2023, Concordia received 116 access requests for information held by the university. Those requests ranged from questions about security and harassment complaints in the Stingers football team, to statistics on sexual assault complaints and academic sanctions.
These access to information (ATI) request files remained open for 52 days on average. So, how does Concordia’s transparency stack up compared to other Canadian universities?
Through their work at the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU), VP University Affairs Abe Berglas has overseen many information requests filed to McGill, including requests about policy, budgets and security.
They say they’ve seen an increasing reluctance from their university to provide internal information.
“Student representatives are positioned to provide accountability to the university,” they explained. “We’re also asked to explain a lot of McGill’s quite confusing bureaucracy, and both of these things are hard to do when we have limited information.”
Institutional transparency has always been challenging for journalists, elected officials and other democratic actors. Projects like the Globe and Mail’s Secret Canada or the Investigative Journalism Foundation exist to ensure Canadians get access to information about the biggest, and sometimes most opaque, institutions in the country.
But universities often fly under the radar.
“I’ve seen these kinds of audits for federal and provincial governments. I’ve seen them for municipal governments, but I’ve not seen one for universities,” said Dean Beeby, a freelance investigative journalist, freedom-of-information specialist, and transparency advocate.
Secret Canada has compiled the largest database of ATI requests made to public institutions across Canada. Of their 375,000 requests, only 1,205 are requests made to universities.
Based on documents obtained by the Concordian, there are lengthy delays around the release of information to the public at Canadian universities. The number of requests filed to these institutions between January 2021 and May 2023 ranged from over 300 at Memorial University of Newfoundland to seven at Yukon University. On average, some universities’ files were closed after two days, while others remained open for 176 days.
In that period, ATI files at Concordia were open for an average of 52 days, starting with the reception of the request. The extended deadline to respond to an ATI request in Quebec is 30 days. Most of Concordia’s ATI files were closed after that deadline.
In an email, Concordia spokesperson Vannina Maestracci said that this time frame did not necessarily represent the length it took the university to provide documents in response to an ATI request. She said files sometimes remain open after a response is sent.
When asked for further data on the frequency of these files remaining open after a response is sent out, Maestracci said retrieving that information would take a few weeks.
Concordia’s files are open, on average, for longer than those of other universities in Montreal.
“Universities are like micro-societies,” said Justin Vaillancourt, Information Director at UQAM’s newspaper Montréal Campus. “We need people who will look into what’s going on in those societies in the same way people look into what’s going on in the bigger society. And these [legal] mechanisms, they exist to protect students, and to protect student democracy.”
Transparency and access to information in Canada
Information requests are made possible through access to information legislation across provinces that allows Canadians to access information held by public institutions. These laws date back to the 1980s, around the time when the federal government passed the Access to Information Act (ATIA).
“The genius of the Access to Information Act and all of these freedom of information legislations was it empowered ordinary people, citizens, to command information,” said Beeby.
“Transparency with public institutions is the foundation of our democracy,” he added.
Beeby has been working with Canada’s vast and convoluted access to information system since the ATIA first came about. He described it as “the golden era” for governmental transparency.
Access requests helped Beeby investigate the removal of 2SLGBTQI+ members of the Canadian Armed Forces and the federal public service.
Universities fall under the provincial access to information legislation, which varies between provinces.
Newfoundland and Labrador has one of the most transparent governments that force public bodies to publish requests made to their institution. This openness is apparent at Memorial University in St. John’s, which publishes all access requests they receive on their website.
In Saskatchewan, public bodies don’t need to track access requests.
Crumbling oversight
Since the creation of these access to information laws, Beeby says governments and public institutions became more legally savvy in finding “ways to subvert the law or to find ways to act against the spirit of the law, which was openness and transparency.”
According to data compiled by Secret Canada, the average processing time for access to information requests is 122 days in Ontario, 25 days in Quebec, and 67 days in BC. Those responses don’t always lead to data, as institutions can invoke exceptions like privacy and industrial secrets to avoid giving away information.
Data gathered by the Concordian about previous ATI requests filed to over 40 Canadian universities shows that UBC is the university where ATI files are open the longest, with an average of 176 days.
According to the government of British Columbia website, documents should be shared within 30 days after receiving the freedom of information (FOI) request. FOI is a term some provinces use instead of ATI.
“In the last two years, we filed 10 FOIs. […] We got seven of them, and only one of them on time,” said Iman Janmohamed, editor-in-chief of UBC’s the Ubyssey.
She explained that it is difficult to rely on access to information requests due to their timeline.
“UBC is one of Canada’s largest public universities,” said UBC Senior Media Strategist Thandi Fletcher, explaining that the university receives many FOI requests as its scale and research projects “naturally generates significant public interest.”
For Vaillancourt, knowing the complexity of the ATI process has led him to avoid filing these requests to UQAM when he could.
“Which is unfortunate, because that mechanism was put in place so we could have access to information,” he said. “But at the moment, it’s working in a way that discourages us from having access to information.”
Every province has a commission to settle disputes relating to access to information. In Quebec, the Commission d’Accès à l’Information (CAI) works with requesters and institutions to ensure the law is followed.
But filing an appeal with the CAI can prolong the process for months and sometimes years. According to their latest report, the average processing time of complaints and investigations relating to access to information was 490 days in 2023-2024.
Berglas hasn’t been shy when it comes to requesting information from McGill. More and more, they said they’ve seen the university wait until the deadline before issuing a response.
Berglas also said they are seeing more refused requests, which the university justifies by citing exceptions outlined in the law. They’ve considered appealing decisions to the CAI.
“In hindsight, I think I should have been appealing more,” Berglas said. “I think the idea of a legal process is very scary to people, especially the notion that you might need a lawyer, and you need to start thinking about getting a lawyer; [it] has been very dissuasive for me personally.”
They are currently working on creating a database that will bring together the responses to ATI requests filed to McGill.
McGill did not respond to the Concordian’s request for more information on their ATI procedure.
At Concordia, the access and privacy officer has refused to process students’ ATI requests filed in the context of journalism classes.
“Given our limited resources, we have asked that the University’s resources not be further strained by class assignments in order to prioritize meeting our obligations under the law regarding ATIs,” said Maestracci.
Under access to information laws, anyone can request information, for any reason.
According to documents obtained by the Concordian, Concordia had five open cases with the CAI in 2023, two of which began in 2022 and one of which involved the Concordian. They spent $12,059.68 on legal fees related to these cases in 2023, seeking representation from law firms Chenette Litigation Boutique Inc. and Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP.
Concordia’s access to information
ATI requests aren’t the only way in which universities can share information with students and the wider public.
“There’s a lot of different forms of communication,” said Maestracci. “There’s obviously internal communication to our students, to our faculty, to our staff. There are press releases that are being put out on research that is done at Concordia.”
In her case, Maestracci is in charge of answering the media. Spokespeople are often the public-facing voice of the university and the first point of contact for reporters.
Vaillancourt said he’s had good experiences with UQAM’s media relations team overall.
“What I find unfortunate,” he said, “is that when we make media requests or when we have questions about our university, we’re able to get answers because we’re journalists. But for students who have questions about the university, it becomes more complicated to have access to information.”
Similarly, Berglas said they have privileged access to information as a student representative.
“I do often get responses to my emails,” they said. “I find that sometimes, answers can be quite vague. I do often prefer to have the documents themselves. So oftentimes, I will kind of skip the process of asking and go straight to an ATI request.”
Reforming access to information
Recent decisions in Canada are making some advocates fear the country is moving away from transparency. In February 2024, the Supreme Court ruled that memos sent to Ministers by the Premier are exempt from disclosure.
“Improvements in [freedom of information] laws have come normally with a change of government,” said Beeby. “It’s with a new government trying to show that it’s a new broom, and that it’s open and transparent, and that’s going to be the best chance I think we have for meaningful reform.”
To Berglas, anyone at the university should be able to request information. They pointed out that universities might receive less access to information requests if they preemptively made more information, including policies, available online.
Vaillancourt echoed the importance of a functional access to information system.
“It takes people who are transparent, procedures that are transparent, so that we understand how things are happening, how things work, how decisions are made,” he said. “If we don’t have access to that, it’s unfortunate for students. I think I have a right to know what’s going on in my university.”
This article was updated on Oct. 31, 2024 to include a comment from UBC, who did not respond in time for print publication.
