Access to Information

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The Canadian Institute for Information and Privacy Studies (CIIPS) exists to expand public knowledge of freedom of information and privacy issues in Canada. CIIPS achieves that through programs of research, education, and advocacy. We are a registered charitable organization.

CIIPS is grateful to operate in the Thompson-Okanagan region of British Columbia, the traditional and unceded territory of the Nlaka’pamux People, Syilx Peoples, Secwepemc Nation, Simpcw territory and St’at’imc Nation.

COMMENT - What were the origins of Canada's first secrecy law, the Official Secrecy Act?

Canada's early secrecy laws were an inheritance from Britain. In the 1870s and 1880s, a series of scandals in the UK gave impetus to a confidentiality law. The most series of these scandals concerned the leak by Charles Marvin, an employee in the Foreign Office, of details of a treaty between the United Kingdom and Russia. Marvin was charged with larceny - for theft of the paper itself on which this information was conveyed, not the information itself - and his case was dismi

CIIPS Team

NEWS - Federal Court Orders Disclosure of Redacted Portions of the Rodal Report

CIIPS congratulates B'nai Brith Canada on a recent and significant win in obtaining more disclosure of a troubled episode in Canadian history.[1] B'nai Brith Canada v Minister of Canadian Heritage (2026 FC 1119) is a reminder that the international relations and national security exemptions in the Access to Information Act (ATIA) are not indefinite and that the discretion to withhold under section 15 must actually be exercised -- with the public's right to know its history pr

CIIPS Team