OTTAWA — The Liberal government’s latest budget pledged $750 million to renew its superclusters initiative, but the money came with strings: A panel of prominent private-sector executives had recommended new objectives for the five organizations, which bring firms together for R&D projects. Major changes to the program were coming.

The superclusters are among Ottawa’s most prominent innovation ideas, but some industry critics have questioned their effectiveness since the beginning. So the panel’s evaluation of the superclusters—positive or negative—would have attracted considerable interest. But the government never revealed the group’s existence, and withheld details of its role and recommendations in response to The Logic’s recent access-to-information (ATI) request. It’s just one instance of how badly the ATI system—meant to foster transparency and public accountability—has deteriorated under the Liberal government, which promised to improve it.

The public’s legislated right to know first took effect in July 1983, under the Liberal government of Pierre Trudeau. For a $5 fee, residents of Canada can ask for documents and data from federal departments and agencies, which have 30 days to respond. Officials must provide copies of emails, memos, slide decks and other files that fit the request. However, the law also includes provisions that let them push back due dates and withhold certain information. 

The extensions and exemptions are designed to ensure ATI requests don’t interfere with the government’s work, and to safeguard sensitive information. But regulators’ assessments, departmental disclosures and The Logic’s analysis of its own reporters’ requests all show that delays and redactions are increasingly the norm.

Take the case of the superclusters. In September 2021, Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED) quietly appointed an advisory panel to assess the program and make recommendations for a possible second mandate. Members included Armen Bakirtzian, co-founder and CEO of Kitchener, Ont.-based Intellijoint Surgical; Pierre Boivin, CEO of Montreal-based Claridge; and former University of Alberta president Indira Samarasekera.

In a February letter to Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne, the panel concluded that the superclusters had “made a remarkable impact.” The communication was not publicly released, but The Logic obtained a copy from a source, and was first to report on it in April. The letter suggested that the five superclusters, which fund collaborative industrial projects, be given “common missions” such as decarbonization and “net-zero economic transformation.” It also called for “a strong communication strategy” to convey the program’s value to the public, and for any further capital to be allocated via a competitive process.

The group’s letter was 1,299 words across three pages. Here it is:

Less than two months after the letter was sent, the federal budget renewed the supercluster initiative, announcing that the new funding would be allocated “on a competitive basis” and that the five organizations would undertake “joint missions aligned with key government priorities, such as fighting climate change.” The program was also renamed “Canada’s innovation clusters,” with Champagne later telling The Globe and Mail there’s “a marketing aspect” to the new label. 

In July, The Logic received another copy of the letter from ISED, in response to our ATI request. This version was 21 words long. Two of the three pages were entirely withheld. The panel’s membership, mandate, findings and recommendations were all redacted. Here is what it looked like:

“We are committed to being open and transparent,” said Laurie Bouchard, a spokesperson for Champagne, in response to questions about the redactions in the ATI response. “In this specific case, the information was provided as advice for a minister, which is exempted from disclosure under the Access to Information Act.” Bouchard also cited the law as the reason the government had not made public any details of the panel. Departments, including ISED, routinely announce advisory groups and publish their reports. 

It “would be inappropriate to speculate or comment on the government’s decision-making process,” including whether the group’s recommendations influenced changes to the supercluster program, Bouchard said.

The panel’s letter isn’t the only file that ISED has heavily redacted. The department provided full disclosures in 43.5 per cent of ATI responses in the 2016–17 fiscal year, the Liberals’ first full year in office, but only 20.2 per cent of cases five years later.  The department is also taking longer. In 2016–17, it completed 94.2 per cent of requests within legislated deadlines, but that fell to just 75.5 per cent in 2020–21. 

Bouchard blamed COVID-19 measures, noting that lockdowns and remote work limited officials’ ability to conduct consultations and access documents. But ISED’s on-time performance had already dropped significantly before the pandemic, to 80.8 per cent in 2019–20. 

The Logic also analyzed its own requests to ISED for copies of briefing notes—memos that are prepared by departmental staff for ministers or senior public servants about policy changes, funding decisions or upcoming meetings. This publication has sought 999 such documents since January 2021. ISED has provided 448, of which 131 were delivered past deadlines, an average of 63 days late. Another 396 are overdue, by an average of nearly 271 days. The department also frequently redacts substantial parts of these routine files—in 195 cases, more than half the pages were greyed out.

Canada’s ATI law allows the government to withhold “certain information about the internal decision-making processes of government,” said Alain Belle-Isle, a spokesperson for the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, which oversees the system. The rationale, he said, is that disclosure could have a chilling effect on the “candidness” of the public service’s advice and discussions, and “lead to a reluctance to deal frankly with difficult questions.“

But in ATI responses to The Logic, the government has regularly used those provisions to withhold not only counsel but factual information and internal assessments. In February 2021, for example, ISED officials sent Champagne a list of Canada’s top 10 companies by greenhouse-gas emissions. In a version provided to The Logic that August, the department redacted the names of the firms and their carbon-dioxide output, citing the advice exemption. 

The department also used that carve-out, along with one covering international affairs, to justify withholding almost all of an April memo prepared for Champagne ahead of a meeting with Evraz North America CEO James Herald. The Chicago-based firm is a subsidiary of a multinational steelmaker part-owned by the billionaire Roman Abramovich. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Ottawa sanctioned Abramovich and paused payments to Evraz North America from a $40-million loan from its flagship Strategic Innovation Fund (SIF). In response to a separate ATI request, ISED similarly redacted from a May memo the number of SIF recipients “that have some unmitigated exposure to Russia.” Much of the document is greyed out.  

The federal innovation department is a powerful economic policymaker, giving out billions in business-support funding, and drafting legislation in key areas like privacy and competition. Despite that, its ATI team has been tackling more files with fewer resources. In 2008–2009, when it received 660 requests, it had 12 employees working on ATI and spent $1.29 million. In 2020–21, the department’s expenses totalled $1.24 million, with 19 staff facing 1,475 new requests. Even as its ATI spending stayed flat over those 13 years, ISED’s total annual budget grew from $1.5 billion to $4.03 billion. 

ISED is hardly the only department that misses deadlines and withholds information. Finance Canada completed 83.8 per cent of requests on time in 2016–17, but 72.8 per cent of them in 2020–21. Of The Logic’s 439 memo requests since January 2021, 106 are overdue, by an average of 231 days. 

(It’s not just briefing notes. In January 2020, The Logic requested copies of documents about a digital-services tax, sent to three senior officials at Finance Canada over the previous three months. More than two and a half years later, the department’s tax-policy branch has not even sent the relevant files to the ATI team so it can begin processing.)

Of the responses that Finance Canada did provide to The Logic, more than three-fifths were substantially redacted, with half or more of the content withheld. One example: notes for deputy minister Michael Sabia’s October 2021 meeting with Sagard Holdings president Paul Desmarais III, Portage CEO Adam Felesky, Koho CEO Daniel Eberhard and Wealthsimple CEO Michael Katchen. The executives have all been vocal proponents of open banking.

In her latest annual report published in June, information commissioner Caroline Maynard called into question the Liberal government’s commitment to access to information, noting that the public service’s capacity to process requests has “degraded,” and that the latest federal budget “offered very little funding” to address it. “COVID-19 can no longer be used as an excuse for not living up to legislative obligations,” she wrote, since departments and agencies have had over two years to adapt to processing ATI requests during a pandemic. 

Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau came to office in October 2015 after a campaign in which he criticized the then-Conservative government for trading in secrecy and promised an “open and transparent” alternative. The party’s platform also pledged to extend access-to-information rules to the prime minister’s and ministers’ offices. 

Experts and journalists who use the ATI system frequently say it’s become worse under the Liberals, not better. Changes to the law require the government to proactively publish some documents, like the prime minister’s mandate letters to cabinet, and briefing books prepared for new ministers. But the offices of Trudeau and his ministers still aren’t required to disclose documents in response to ATI requests from the public, for example.

In June 2020, the Liberal government launched a review of the ATI system. “We continue to take this responsibility very seriously,” said Belle-Isle, adding that the government will table a final report and recommendations in Parliament “later in 2022.” While the Liberals’ changes to the ATI law require regular reviews, they didn’t set a deadline for completing them.