Federal Access and Privacy Legislation and the Public Archives of Canada

Dead file.Lifecycle.Collective memory.To help explain their activities both to themselves and t o others, archivists are fond of employing organic concepts derived from life.No doubt such allusions are the consequence of archives being the product of individual and collective human experiences.If life provides a model for understanding archives, is there a place in such a theory of archives for that most interior of experiences, the secret, which some observers believe constitutes the inner authentic self?' Perhaps there is.Conditions of access are placed on both private and government collections, in part, because of thesecrets they contain.As with personal secrets, control over secrecy and openness gives power; it influences what others know.In government, and thus in the archives of government, secrecy is justified by the belief that the keeping of a secret is beneficial to those who d o not know and is ensured by such measures as the oath of office and the Official Secrets Act.One author has claimed that the Canadian bureaucracy is more secretive than most.2If this is so, what about its archives and access to the secrets contained therein?In this paper I will address the issue of access by discussing past and present access practices at the Public Archives of Canada and by focusing, in particular, on the recently enacted federal access and privacy legislation and on some of the consequences this new legislation will have for archivists.The matter of access to government records at the Public Archives has been a vexing issue dating from the establishment of the institution.As John Smart has pointed out,3 the first archivist at the federal level, Douglas Brymner, made reference to the importance of access to collections.For Brymner, however, access meant having collections adequately classified and indexed so as to facilitate their use.4An earlier version of this paper was read at the Annual Meeting of the Association of Canadian Archivists in Vancouver, 3 June 1983.The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the Public Archives of Canada.For a discussion about the conundrums of secrecy see Sissela Bok, Secrets: On rhe Ethics o f Concealmenr and Revelation (New York, 1982).James Eayrs, Diplomaq and its Disconrenrs (Toronto, 1971), p. 33.The idea of secrecy and authority in Canadian society is further developed in E.Z.Friedenberg, Deference to Aurhority: R e Case o f Canada (New York, 1980), pp.33-61, J. Smart."The Professional Archivist's Responsibility as an Advocate of Public Research," Archivaria 16 (Summer 1983), pp.141-42.D. Brymner, "Archives -Report of Mr. D. Brymner," Report o f the Minisrer o f Agriculture, 1872, Sessional Paper 26, pp.17 1-74.