Story Archive

Anecdotal Evidence

Michael Dagg, a researcher in Canada’s capital city of Ottawa, Ontario, paid the standard C$5 fee to request access to the records of an old, closed, police investigation called “Project Anecdote”. Normally, Canadian law gives government agencies 30 days to comply with information requests, but Library and Archives Canada said they’d need a little more time: 292,000 days — just under 800 years. Whoops! Typo! “Our initial [estimate] was a 130-year extension,” it told Dagg, but it wouldn’t take that long, either. “Based on the classification of these records,” it said, Dagg could expect that “by the 80th year most, if not all of these records could be opened.” Information requests have been exceeding the 30-day deadline more and more often, watchdogs note. In 2015-2016, only 64 percent of the requests were answered by the deadline. (RC/Toronto Star) ...The percentage of success for this fiscal year is due to be reported in late 2117.