Canada's information and privacy commissioners are calling on all governments – provincial, territorial and federal – to put more information on the public record, making it easier for citizens to access.

Tracy-Anne McPhee, the Yukon's Ombudsman and Information and Privacy Commissioner who is hosting the annual meeting of Canada's information and privacy commissioners in Whitehorse this week, said today governments must shift from a position of providing information on a need-to-know basis.

"Governments should be prepared to release information ... about their workings and things that interest citizens in the interest of transparency and accountability,” she told media at a brief press conference.

McPhee's federal counterpart, Suzanne Legault, Canada's Information Commissioner, said it is in taxpayers' interest to know how their governments are spending taxpayer dollars.

"The mindset should be that when you produce documents, when you conduct studies, when you analyze policies, that should be disclosed to the public as a matter of course,” Legault said.

"From my own perspective, if there's public money being spent, it should be disclosed how it's being spent. It's a question of accountability.”

Attempting to access information from the Yukon government and its agencies can be an onerous task, fraught with delays often perceived to be invoked for no apparent reason save that the territory's access to information legislation allows it.

Recently, the Star requested documents from the Yukon Workers' Compensation Health and Safety Board, which amounted to 500 pages.

In addition to the 15 cent-per-page charge, the compensation board said it would take 12 hours, at $25/hour, to complete the required photocopying.

After the Star appealed the cost of its request, the board reduced the hours it needed for photocopying to six and the Star accepted the reduced charge.

Several days later, the paper received a letter explaining that the entire process would be delayed 90 days, as legislation under the Access to Information and Privacy Protection Act (ATIPP) allowed, with no further explanation.

As well, documents on the privatization of the Yukon's energy assets have been withheld by the current territorial government. The public only discovered such negotiations were underway after some of the documents were leaked to the media last year.

While McPhee could not comment on a specific case, she said governments could go a long way to reducing the red tape by reclassifying documents "that could be automatically made available.”

The Yukon's ombudsman and information and privacy commissioner also said she is often unaware of potential problems with the ATIPP process because few complaints come across her desk.

"To be quite honest, we don't get many of those kinds of (ATIPP) reviews,” McPhee said. "And often people wait until they get their response and then if they're concerned about that or don't understand, they come to my office.”

On the federal level, where the current government is withholding a report on the efficacy of the firearm registry until after a vote in Parliament to dismantle the registry is held, Legault said Ottawa is lagging behind its democratic counterparts.

"We certainly do not have a prime ministerial declaration on open government at the federal level. We haven't seen that,” said Legault.

"This has happened in the U.S., the U.K. and Australia, the president and both the prime ministers of those countries made very strong statements as this is what they were adopting as their culture of government and we haven't seen that at the federal level (here).”

Currently, all privacy and information commissioners assembled in Whitehorse are looking to what's happening in Ontario, where the provincial government is slowly moving towards and "access-by-design” approach.

"The concept to open government is trying to direct governments to get away from thinking that the Freedom of Information Act is the only way information can be released,” explained Brian Beamish, Assistant Commissioner with the Information and Privacy Commission of Ontario.

"We need to get beyond thinking of the FOI as being the release mechanism.”

Beamish said the uptake, particularly with Ontario's Environment ministry, is positive.

"In Ontario, the (access-by-design) concept has not met with resistance, and there's a recognition that this is the way of the future and this will be citizen-driven,” he said.

"And the prime one for us is the Ministry of Environment. Across Canada, these ministries hold a wealth of information on air, water, land quality... and I would say the Ontario ministry is putting access by design into operation.”

But don't expect access to information from any level of government in Canada, particularly in Ottawa, to happen overnight, cautions Legault.

"Most departments at the federal level have really antiquated information management and records-keeping practices, so their documents are not in good order so it's very difficult for them to proactively disclose information,” she said.

"(So) it's at this point, it's very embryonic.”