MFOIA: Government In A Modern Democracy

In speaking to the practical reality of government in a modern democracy, Justice LaForest said:

The overarching purpose of access to information legislation, then, is to facilitate democracy. It does so in two related ways. It helps to ensure first, that citizens have the information required to participate meaningfully in the democratic process, and secondly, that politicians and bureaucrats remain accountable to the citizenry.

Parliament and the public cannot hope to call the government to account without an adequate knowledge of what is going on; nor can they hope to participate in the decision-making process and contribute their talents to the formation of policy and legislation if that process is hidden from view. Access laws operate on the premise that politically relevant information should be distributed as widely as possible.