The Conversation Canada
📰 The Conversation (academic)
📍 ON
Jul 9, 2026
· 6 min read
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New provincial laws are making it harder to access government records in Canada
Original article ↗Named in this story
UNIVERSITY OF MANITOBA●
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Key figures
Since 2024, British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario have introduced new legislation that gives public bodies more room to withhold, delay or dismiss records requests.
Alberta’s Bill 34 Alberta was the first province to pass its updated legislation.
Bill 34, the Access to Information Act, received royal assent on Dec.
5, 2024, and came into force on June 11, 2025, replacing the province’s Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.
Ontario’s Bill 97 Ontario followed Alberta’s lead with Bill 97, an omnibus budget bill passed on April 23, 2026 that rewrote the province’s Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.
Quoted verbatim from the article — not summarised.
B.I.A.S. ANALYSIS
CENTER
Signal breakdown
Heuristic (v1/v3)
-0.28 · CENTER-LEFT
ML v2 (DistilBERT)
0.300 · RIGHT
Ensemble
0.150 · CENTER
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📰 Media
· The Conversation (academic)
Rolling outlet bias
CENTER LEFT
avg -0.287
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Excerpt from The Conversation Canada
New freedom of information laws are giving public bodies more room to withhold, delay or deny records requests.
New provincial laws are making it harder to access government records in Canada
Published: July 9, 2026 2.18pm EDT
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Access to information and freedom of information (FOI) laws allow citizens to request records held by public bodies, including governments. FOI legislation is founded on the idea that Canadian citizens have the right to know what their governments are doing, and to hold them accountable for it.
That premise is under strain.…
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