Key takeaways
- In his 2025-26 annual report, David Nurse, who has spent the year pushing back on the province’s rewritten access law, warns that Nova Scotia’s new FOIPOP Act, effective April 1, 2027, makes it mandatory to withhold all Executive Council (cabinet) records and blocks any access for 15 years. His words: “In our view, there was no valid reason for such dramatic changes to the law.”
- Under the current law, background material is routinely disclosed once a cabinet decision is made public or implemented, or after five years; other records open after ten. The new law stretches the wait to 15 years and sweeps in every schedule and supporting document attached to a cabinet submission.
- The warning landed the same week the province celebrated 3,700 processed requests, 91 percent on-time completion, and the country’s second-best compliance rate. The numbers describe throughput. They say nothing about what you are no longer allowed to ask for.
The letter that broke Right to Know Week
Right to Know Week (September 28 to October 2 this year) is the one week a year when governments compete to look transparent. Nova Scotia played its part: an October 1 news release touting 3,700 FOIPOP requests, 91 percent completed on time, 460,000 pages reviewed, and a cross-Canada scan ranking the province second only to Yukon.
Then the commissioner answered. Nurse’s 2025-26 annual report includes his August 26, 2026 letter to ministers Scott Armstrong and Jill Balser, asking for amendments in the fall or spring sitting. The headline concern is section 32 of the new FOIPOP Act, which he calls a step backward.
First, the exemption becomes mandatory: the head of the public body must refuse access to Executive Council records.
Second, the definition is wide. An “Executive Council record” now means the report, recommendation, memorandum, or presentation, plus “any schedules and any supplementary or supporting documents submitted with” them. The background material the current law routinely discloses becomes part of the sealed package.
Third, the wait. Section 32(3) bars any access, including background information, until the record is 15 years old.
The old rules were already tight
This is the detail that makes the commissioner’s objection interesting rather than theatrical. Nova Scotia’s current law was never a transparency festival. Section 13 lets the head of a public body withhold anything that would “reveal the substance of deliberations” of the Executive Council. In practice, background information is routinely disclosed once the decision is public or implemented, or after five years. Other records open after ten.
Nurse’s argument is not that the old regime was generous. It is that the old regime was sufficient: it protected the substance of deliberations, it matched British Columbia and Newfoundland and Labrador, and Nova Scotians were not getting unreasonable access under it. The new law takes a system he calls adequate and replaces it with the strictest cabinet-secrecy rule in the country.
| What changed | Current law (s. 13) | New law (s. 32, from April 1, 2027) |
|---|---|---|
| Exemption type | Discretionary: the head may refuse | Mandatory: the head must refuse |
| What it covers | Information revealing the substance of deliberations | All Executive Council records, including schedules and supporting documents |
| Background information | Routinely disclosed once the decision is public or implemented, or after 5 years | Withheld for 15 years like everything else |
| Other records | Available after 10 years | Available after 15 years |
| Comparison | Aligned with BC and Newfoundland and Labrador | Stands apart from both |
The awkward statistic
There is one number in the province’s release that deserves a second read: “100 per cent acceptance rate of the Office of Information and Privacy Commissioner recommendations.” A government can accept every recommendation a commissioner makes and still legislate his central objection away, because recommendations operate under the old law while the new one is written in the legislature. Throughput statistics and secrecy statutes measure different things.
And one more number that got less attention: 14 requests were deemed frivolous or vexatious this year, closing 155 files. The new act formalizes that power, and note who wields it: the commissioner, not the government. Some practitioners will call that a guardrail; others will ask how often volume-based refusal becomes convenience-based refusal. Nobody has published a trend line on it yet.
What changes in your records playbook
If you manage records, respond to access requests, or advise a public body, three things to do before April 1, 2027:
- Re-map your classifications. Anything routed through Executive Council, including schedules and briefing decks attached to a submission, now sits under a mandatory 15-year seal. Audit what your teams file under “cabinet.”
- Check your retention schedules. The new rule collides with any schedule that destroys working records earlier, or any habit of treating background material as disclosable after a decision. The decision point moves from “when the decision is public” to “when the record turns fifteen.”
- Watch the amendment window. Nurse asked for amendments in the fall or spring sitting. Whether the legislature touches section 32 before April is the one thread nobody can resolve from here.
Actionable takeaway: Pull your current cabinet-classification guidance and check how much background material your people treat as releasable after a decision. That assumption expires April 1, 2027.