Michel Drapeau thumbs through a stack of mostly blank pages on the table before him, pointing out the terse notes atop each. "Pages 165 to 177 are withheld ... pages 782 to 795 are withheld ... pages 936 to 1189 are withheld."
That is what Drapeau got when he asked CBC about a new corporate management plan. Of 1,554 pages sent to him, almost all had the contents blanked out. And even those pages arrived long after the legal deadline for receipt.
It's been the same, he says, for hundreds of other requests made to the public broadcaster since the CBC and other Crown corporations became subject to the federal Access to Information Act on Sept. 1, 2007.
Drapeau, supported by Sun Media, has taken legal action.
On Wednesday, the Federal Court will hear an application by his law-office colleague, David Statham, to force CBC to disclose documents requested under the access law between Sept. 1 and Dec. 12, 2007.
Drapeau is a local lawyer and retired colonel who specializes in access to information and who submits access requests to government on behalf of a variety of clients including businesses, MPs and media.
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