Four federal access-to-information records are dated December 2026

The federal registry of completed access-to-information (ATI) requests contains four records dated December 2026, a month that has not yet arrived, even though the registry’s own rules say the year must not be in the future.

The dataset on open.canada.ca had 205,893 rows when we downloaded it on Nov. 1, 2026, so the four records are a tiny share. The published schema says the year field “must not be in the future or before 2011.” All four rows say year 2026, month 12. Their request numbers point to files opened in 2025:

Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario, requests A-2025-04 and A-2025-05; The Correctional Investigator Canada, request A2025-00010; and the Veterans Review and Appeal Board, request A-2025-00007.

What the records show, and do not show

The most likely explanation is a typing slip, 2026 for 2025. That would put the completions in December 2025. The registry’s own nil-report data adds a wrinkle: for the Veterans Review and Appeal Board, a nil filing exists for December 2025 as well as the December 2026 completion, so both cannot be right. For the economic development agency and the Correctional Investigator, we found neither a completed nor a nil filing for December 2025.

None of this suggests any request was handled improperly. It shows that the registry accepted dates it says it should reject, which can make monthly counts and delay statistics wrong for the institutions concerned.

Response

We sent questions to the Treasury Board Secretariat, which runs the registry, on Nov. 6, asking whether the dates are errors, how they passed validation and whether they will be corrected. The secretariat’s media office acknowledged the request the same day and said it would consult its experts, but it had not provided an answer by the Nov. 10, 5 p.m. ET deadline. If it responds, we will update this story.

How we checked

We downloaded the Access to Information summaries dataset and its nil-reports file on Nov. 1, 2026, filtered for records dated later than the download date, and compared them with the schema’s rule for the year field. We did not read the underlying requests beyond the public summaries.

Edited by Harry Miller.