In 2018, I’d filed near-identical FOI requests to each of Canada’s 14 federal, provincial and territorial prison agencies asking for data from their correctional databases. I figured there might be interesting stories hidden there, particularly in the relationships between peoples’ sentence lengths, age, sex and race…What ensued was a detailed discussion [between provincial ministries] about how to block me from getting what I wanted.
A damning indictment of the current Freedom of Information process in Canada.
The whole Secret Canada project is fine reporting, and well worth your time. I wanted to highlight the above story, though, because it’s so personal. Also the surprising fact that Alberta denied every FOI request The Globe and Mail made as part of the project, the only province to do so.
