No Reason To Withhold

The law is designed to facilitate the disclosure of government-held information. As such, a member of the public need not demonstrate why a particular record or information should be disclosed. The onus is on the government body to establish why a record should not be released, otherwise the presumption of disclosure prevails.

As such, institutions (the term used in the Act to define public bodies) are strongly encouraged to provide routine disclosure of information on an informal non-statutory basis, and to proactively disseminate information to the public even in the absence of a formal or informal request. In many cases, an institution will provide the information in accordance with a routine disclosure practice, or simply because it can see no reason to withhold it. The statute recognizes that these dissemination practices existed long before the law came into effect, and should continue to exist, unless personal information is involved.