Access to Information and FOI Requests in Canada: Federal, Provincial, and Territorial Rules

Access to information, also called freedom of information or FOI, is the legal right to request records from a government body in Canada, and which law governs that request, what it costs, and how long the government body has to respond, all depend on which government you are asking: federal, provincial, territorial, or municipal.

Information last verified on 2026-09-24. This article has not yet been reviewed by a licensed lawyer.

This article covers access to information and freedom of information (FOI) law in Canada: the federal Access to Information Act, RSC 1985, c A-1, and the separate access statute each province and territory has enacted for its own government bodies. It does not cover requests to a private business for the personal information that business holds about you, which is a different legal process under PIPEDA; see the FOI versus PIPEDA section below. It also does not cover court record access, which follows the open-courts principle rather than access to information legislation, or vital records such as birth and marriage certificates, which follow a province's vital statistics act rather than its FOI law; both are linked near the end of this article as related but distinct topics.

What an Access to Information or FOI Request Is

An access to information request, also called a freedom of information or FOI request, asks a government body to disclose records it holds. It is a statutory right created by legislation, not a favour the government body extends. The federal Access to Information Act states its own purpose plainly:

"The purpose of this Act is to enhance the accountability and transparency of federal institutions in order to promote an open and democratic society and to enable public debate on the conduct of those institutions." (Access to Information Act, RSC 1985, c A-1, s.2(1))

Every Canadian province and territory has its own version of this right, aimed at that jurisdiction's own government bodies rather than the federal government. A request is not limited to written correspondence. Depending on the statute and the public body, it can reach emails, reports, contracts, meeting minutes, and other records in a government body's custody or control, subject to specific exemptions that protect things like personal privacy, solicitor-client privilege, and ongoing law enforcement investigations.

A separate right exists alongside the general access right in most of these statutes: a request for your own personal information held by a government body. That branch is usually cheaper or free, and several jurisdictions, including the federal government and British Columbia, charge no application fee at all for it, even where a general request does carry a fee.

Which Law Applies: Federal, Provincial, Territorial, or Municipal

Canada has no single, national FOI law covering every government body. Which statute applies depends entirely on which government holds the records you want.

• Federal government institutions (departments, agencies, and Crown corporations) fall under the federal Access to Information Act. Requests for your own personal information from a federal institution instead go under the federal Privacy Act, RSC 1985, c P-21. See ATIP requests in Canada for the federal process in depth.
• Provincial and territorial government ministries and agencies fall under that province's or territory's own access statute. Two provinces, Ontario and Saskatchewan, run two parallel Acts rather than one: a provincial-level statute and a separate municipal or local-authority statute, described in the comparison table below.
• Municipalities, school boards, police services boards, and regional health authorities are usually covered by the same provincial statute as the provincial government, sometimes under a distinct municipal-level Act (Ontario's MFIPPA and Saskatchewan's LA FOIP), and sometimes under the general provincial Act applied to local bodies as well (most other provinces).

This site currently covers the federal process and four provinces in depth: ATIP requests (federal), freedom of information in Ontario, FOI requests in British Columbia, FOI requests in Alberta, and access to information in Quebec. The remaining provinces and territories are summarized in the comparison table below.

Fees, Deadlines, and Oversight Bodies Across Canada

The table below covers the federal government and all thirteen provinces and territories. Two things are worth reading before scanning it for a single number.

First, fee architecture splits three ways rather than converging on one figure. Some jurisdictions charge a flat, up-front application fee regardless of format, ranging from $5 to $25. Others charge no application fee at all and instead bill only for the actual work of searching for and copying records, usually after a free allowance of search hours. Quebec goes furthest: access itself is free, with fees limited to the physical cost of reproducing a paper record.

Second, deadlines are not all 30 days, and the unit matters. Some jurisdictions count calendar days, others count business days, and at least two provinces changed their deadline within the last two years. A citation to "the 30 day rule" without naming the jurisdiction and the unit is not reliable.

Two fee cells rest on government guidance rather than the fee regulation itself: Yukon's, which comes from a Government of Yukon pamphlet, and Nunavut's, which comes from a Government of Nunavut brochure. Confirm either with that jurisdiction's access to information office before relying on it.

Access to Information (FOI) Versus PIPEDA: Two Different Regimes

A request to a government body and a request to a private business are governed by entirely different laws in Canada, and the distinction matters because the wrong request goes nowhere.

• Access to information or FOI (this article's topic) is a request to a government institution, such as a federal department, a provincial ministry, a municipality, a school board, or a health authority, for records under a public-sector access statute like the ones in the table above.
• PIPEDA governs a request to a private-sector organization, such as a bank, retailer, telecom, or an employer in a federally regulated sector, for the personal information that organization holds about you. Quebec, British Columbia, and Alberta have their own private-sector privacy laws recognized as substantially similar to PIPEDA for organizations operating in those provinces.

If you want records from a government body, the FOI or access to information process above and the spoke pages linked from it apply. If you want the personal information a private company holds about you, see PIPEDA access requests instead. And if what you actually want is a copy of your own federal government file specifically, see the Privacy Act in Canada, which is a related but separate federal statute from the Access to Information Act.

Related but Different: Court Records and Vital Records

Two other kinds of public record access are sometimes confused with FOI law, but neither runs through an access to information statute.

Court records follow the open-courts principle and each court's own registry rules, not freedom of information legislation. A civil or criminal court file is generally accessible directly through the court registry, not through an access to information request to a government ministry.

Vital records, such as birth, marriage, and death certificates, are governed by each province's or territory's vital statistics act, a separate regime with its own application process and fees, distinct from that same province's FOI law.

Disclaimer: This article provides general information about access to information and freedom of information (FOI) law across the federal government, all ten provinces, and the three territories of Canada, current as of September 2026. It is not legal advice. The Yukon and Nunavut fee cells rest on government guidance rather than the fee regulation itself, as noted below the comparison table. Consult the relevant access to information office or a lawyer licensed in your province or territory for advice on your specific situation.