John Dunn is on welfare. To journalists and other curious citizens using Canada’s free information laws to seek out public records, this is his greatest asset.

For a small fee (Dunn is allowed to make only $200 per month while receiving government assistance), Dunn will file an access to information (ATI) request on your behalf. The Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA) states that if the citizen filing an ATI request can’t afford it, the fees may be waived. Dunn will apply, and, in all likelihood, the government will agree that a citizen on welfare can’t reasonably be expected to pay often expensive, sometimes exorbitant, ATI fees. You pay Dunn less than you would have paid the government, and everybody wins.

For years, enterprising, policy-savvy individuals such as Dunn have been using the complexity of Canada’s ATI system to their benefit, mastering the convoluted process and charging journalists and news organizations for their services. Deadline-driven reporters in increasingly understaffed, overworked newsrooms rarely have the time to file and stay on top of ATI requests (which, beyond a slow-moving back-and-forth through Canada Post, often require multiple phone calls and prodding of ministries to keep on track). But, as much as ATI professionals help journalists uncover important records otherwise buried within ministry archives, it shouldn’t take a professional to navigate a system meant to guarantee every Canadian access to public records.

Among the many pitfalls that plague access to information, both federally and provincially, fees are foremost. FIPPA states that the fees attached to ATI requests can’t exceed the actual costs of fulfilling the request, which include research, photocopying and redaction (yes, that means you have to pay the government to withhold information from you). But this isn’t always the case.

For every John Dunn helping journalists navigate access to information, there are private contractors performing similar work on the government side and making, in most cases, much more money. In the past decade, the federal government has spent over $57 million on outside consultants to handle ATI requests—an expense that has grown steadily every year. These consultants charge anywhere between $20 and $225 per hour to assess which public records can be released in response to an ATI request.

Part of every ATI fee is designated for research and, in cases where outside consulting is involved, research fees spike. Fortunately for journalists, there are several ways to work around this. Narrowing a request, either by time span or subject matter, yields fewer documents and takes the ministry less effort to process, resulting in (at least theoretically) lower fees. Another way to narrow a request is by asking to see a list of relevant documents after filing the ATI, then picking and choosing from that list.

Yet, even among those who make a living off the Byzantine complexity of the current system, some have joined the ongoing call for reform. According to award-winning ATI specialist Ken Rubin, Canada’s self-described “information warrior,” free information should be a constitutional right, rather than a privilege. “I’ve got to admit I enjoy the work,” Rubin says of his job. “I want to stimulate others to go out, dig around and question authority.”

Despite his noble aims, Rubin’s class of ATI specialists is a profession that shouldn’t exist. Canada shouldn’t need information warriors because accessing free information shouldn’t be a battle.

On November 20, 2014, Tim Duncan received an access to information (ATI) request. As executive assistant to the minister of transportation and infrastructure, he was asked for all records relating to the Highway of Tears, a 724-kilometre stretch of B.C.’s Highway 16 between Prince George and Prince Rupert where, by some estimates, over 40 aboriginal women have been murdered or gone missing. He searched his emails for “Highway of Tears,” yielding over a dozen results.

Duncan, then a new employee, says he quickly alerted fellow ministerial assistant George Gretes to the records. Gretes said, according to Duncan, “You got to get rid of these.” Duncan hesitated, at which point he remembers Gretes taking his mouse and keyboard from him, moving them to the corner of his desk and permanently deleting the records. “Hey, you don’t need to worry about this anymore,” Duncan remembers Gretes saying. “It’s done.”

A year later, Duncan’s account of the incident (wholly denied by Gretes) was published in a report by B.C.’s information and privacy commissioner Elizabeth Denham. “I am deeply disappointed by the practices our investigation uncovered,” writes Denham, and she’s not the only one.

Canada’s ATI system has long been criticized by journalists for its bureaucratic complexity, extended wait times and prohibitive fees. Though the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act guarantees each citizen right of access to any record in the custody of a public body (with notable exceptions including trade secrets and personal information), Denham’s investigation has exposed a culture of secrecy within certain branches of government. The fact that this scandal centred on a request about missing and murdered aboriginal women—an issue already exacerbated by years of government inaction—makes it all the worse.

Duncan, who says he wanted to go public with his story sooner, instead put it off until he left his government position months later. He says coming forward while working for the government would have been “career suicide.”

In the aftermath of last year’s elections, journalists have amplified their demands for reformed national and provincial freedom of information policies. According to the National Freedom of Information Audit, which Newspapers Canada conducts annually by filing nearly 450 requests at the municipal, provincial and federal level, Canada’s 32-year-old federal Access to Information Act has been “effectively crippled as a useful means of promoting accountability.”

Along with the outright deletion of records, Denham decries what she calls “oral government,” in which decisions are made in person and no written record is created. Government employees are also allowed to broadly interpret exemptions to the freedom of information act, which are meant to be used only in specific cases, and often liberally redact even innocuous documents.

The Access to Information Act, implemented in 1983 under Pierre Trudeau, was written for a paper-centric government and hasn’t aged well. At a time when important public information exists in many forms–much of it online–scandals such as B.C.’s point to the need for an updated framework with clear guidelines for the preservation of electronic formats such as email in the face of ATI requests.

But institutional change, however long overdue, would only address part of the ATI problem. In his letter to Denham, Duncan stresses that what happened to him was not an isolated incident but rather a sign that the government doesn’t respect the public’s right to know. And while many civil servants across all branches of Canadian government work diligently in the name of free information, Duncan’s testimony—along with decades of newsroom gripes—has emphasized that many don’t.

When it comes to ATI, the government’s system is only as strong as the conviction of those who comprise it. The hope among journalists is that, as out-dated ATI policies become reformed, so too will outdated attitudes promoting government secrecy.

Stay tuned as the RRJ continues to tackle problems with Access to Information next week.