Health Canada has locked away internal reports on vaccine and drug injuries for up to 15 years, citing the sheer scale of the records involved, according to documents tabled in Parliament.The disclosure emerged in an Inquiry of Ministry response detailing unusually long delays under the Access To Information Act. Health Canada confirmed its longest current extension is 15 years, covering a request for vaccine and adverse drug reaction reports dating back to 1998.Officials said the request originally involved several million pages of records. It has since been narrowed in scope and is now being processed, but the extended delay remains one of the longest on record within the federal government.The Public Health Agency of Canada also acknowledged lengthy delays tied to pandemic-era records, with one request extended by more than five years. The agency blamed the backlog on the volume of material moving through senior offices during COVID-19, the need for extensive consultations, parliamentary motions, and what it described as the requester’s refusal to narrow the scope of the request..The figures were released after Conservative MP Colin Reynolds of Elmwood-Transcona asked which Access To Information requests received since January 1, 2020 had the longest extensions still underway.While Health Canada’s delay raised eyebrows, it does not hold the overall record. Public Works reported an extension of 10,000 days — roughly 27 years — for a request received in 2023 involving about 200,000 pages of documents. The department did not say whether the file was related to COVID-19.Other departments also reported multi-year delays. Industry Canada acknowledged a 12-year extension on one file, while the Immigration and Refugee Board delayed another for a decade.Across government, extensions of two to three years were reported at Environment, Finance, Justice, the Correctional Service, the Superintendent of Financial Institutions, the CRTC, Treasury Board, Administrative Tribunals Support Service and Export Development Canada. Delays stretched to four years at the Communications Security Establishment, five years at Employment, Fisheries, Library and Archives Canada, and the Privy Council..Public Safety reported a six-year delay tied to 30,000 pages of classified material, National Defence cited a seven-year extension, and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency said it took eight years to process nearly 68,000 pages of records.The lengthy delays stand in contrast to cabinet’s 2015 promise that federal information would be “open by default.” Emails released in 2019 later showed some departments weighed political considerations before releasing information.One internal message at Telefilm Canada questioned whether records were of public interest or if media were requesting them, and whether there was a “high profile” political or public policy angle. Management acknowledged that such contextual factors could influence decisions on whether information was released to the public or parliamentarians.
