FOI laws – which are sometimes called right to information or access to information laws – exist across Canada at multiple levels of government, and in countries around the world. Canada’s access law does include a small number of time limits; there’s a section that deals with information gathered by federal investigative bodies, which states records can be withheld for up to 20 years. “They transferred over 15,000 feet of records in one day in late 1983 – 15,000 feet of records without a list of what was in the boxes,” said Paul Marsden, who worked as an archivist with LAC in the years after federal access legislation was enacted.