There’s a problem with how the Canadian government stores important information. In some cases, it doesn’t.

The issue came to light in a series of letters written last April and obtained through an Access to Information request.

The letters begin with the information commissioner, Suzanne Legault, writing to Treasury Board President Tony Clement, about missing policies.

Legault writes that there is no formalized system in place to ensure records from a government organization that is closed, or joins another government office, are saved.

Records can disappear or, even if they are saved, be impossible to search through because no one will know what’s in them or how they’re organized.

Clement responded saying all the documents from an office that is closed are subject to the Library and Archives Act and taken care of by Library and Archives Canada.

That is not good enough according to Michel Drapeau, a lawyer and Ottawa University professor specializing in access to information law.

“It’s obviously a gap,” Drapeau said. “There is a legal vacuum there.”

If you’re looking for documents from an organization that has closed “there is nothing you can do,” Drapeau said.

The Access to Information Act allows anyone to request records from a public institution, including emails, memos, and meeting minutes. But if those records don’t exist, they can’t be asked for.

Legault’s concerns relate to over a dozen government offices that have, or soon will be, closed or amalgamated.

The lack of policies means that there is no consistency with how records from these and other organizations are handled.

When the Canadian Artists and Producers Professional Relations Tribunal was closed in April last year, its records were transferred to the Canadian Industrial Relations Board.

Diane Chartrand, the executive director of the Industrial Relations Board, was transferred as well. She not only knows the records well, she brought them all with her.

“I’m not sure if that’s how it works at every organization, but in this case that’s what happened,” Chartrand said about the transfer of records.

Chartrand said anyone wishing to file an access to information request for tribunal documents from before April 1 2013, can simply file the request through Industrial Relations Board now.

But if you’re looking for documents from International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development, you won’t be as lucky.

The centre was closed in 2012 without a plan for its records. The case was bad enough that it made it into the Office of the information commissioner’s 2012-2013 annual report.

“We learned that some were sent to Library and Archives Canada and others to Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada,” the report says.

The information commissioner closed the file and recommended that the requester make a new request to the Department of Foreign Affairs, which should have received the records in question.

Drapeau says this type of problem is all too possible without clear policies, and there isn’t much someone looking for records can do.

He said you could make a complaint to the information commissioner, which would usually trigger a search for the documents, but because the organization no longer exists it no longer falls under Access to Information laws, so the information commissioner isn’t able to begin a search.

Drapeau said an option is to try a “wild goose chase” and file access to information requests at related government offices hoping they might have copies of the documents you’re looking for.

For now, Legault said in an email that she will “continue to monitor this situation carefully.”

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