Annual Report
Information Commissioner
2001-2002

"Democratic progress requires the ready availability of true and complete information. In this way people can objectively evaluate their government's policy. To act otherwise is to give way to despotic secrecy."

Pierre E. Trudeau

"The purpose of this Act is to extend the present laws of Canada to provide a right of access to information in records under the control of a government institution in accordance with the principles that government information should be available to the public, that necessary exemptions to the right of access should be limited and specific and that decisions on the disclosure of government information should be reviewed independently of government."

Subsection 2(1)
Access to Information Act