Declassification and Access to Information

Canada, as a democratic state, requires a carefully crafted system to balance the legitimate need to protect security with the equally legitimate need to provide public access to the raw materials of knowledge, which are the records generated by agencies of the security and intelligence community.

This section is dedicated to issues related to declassification of and access to these materials.

Resources

Sort by   Title | Date published | Date added | Document type

Feds push for greater access to private info
A consultation document reveals the government is planning to hold talks to "address the challenges faced by police, CSIS and the Competition Bureau when seeking timely access to basic Customer Name Address (CNA) information."
HTML | Published: 2007-09-12 | Added: 2007-10-03

Assessing Canadian Intelligence Literature: 1980-2000
For a relatively small country that does not have a very large intelligence establishment, Canada has produced quite a sizeable literature on such matters.
PDF | Published: 2001-03-20 | Added: 2004-04-13

Historical Declassification and Access to Information: A Bureaucrat's Nightmare
Information about intelligence aspects of military activities is very difficult to find in the open domain and what is provided through open sources might be regarded as suspect.
PDF | Published: 2002-11-06 | Added: 2003-11-30

Terrorism, Law & Democracy How is Canada Changing Following September 11?
This paper provides a brief over of the main issues raised by panellists and presenters during the conference entitled Terrorism, Law & Democracy: How is Canada Changing Following September 11? The conference was attended by representatives from the  [...]
PDF | Published: 2002-03-26 | Added: 2003-05-07

Canada’s Access to Information Act and the Canadian Security and Intelligence Community
The Canadian Access Act was not promulgated with the specific intent of creating greater degrees of openness with regard to the activities of the Canadian security and intelligence community. But concerns about the clandestine world of intelligence were  [...]
PDF | Published: 2002-11-13 | Added: 2002-11-13

Requests for classified information
Request for classified information related to the possible creation of a Canadian foreign intelligence service.
PDF | Published: 2002-07-17 | Added: 2002-07-17