Legal

The registry

This registry owes you nothing. It is not a fund, it holds no money, and it will never pay you. The price on an entry is the size of a claim against the public body that caused the defect. Whether that claim is ever paid is decided by Parliament, not here.

Canada already pays outsiders for information the state cannot see from the inside. The Ontario Securities Commission pays up to 5 million dollars for information about breaches of securities law. The Canada Revenue Agency pays an informant a share of the tax it recovers. A federal body that breaks an obligation it published itself carries no price at all, and outside the body nobody measures it. This registry measures it.

What counts as a defect

A verifiable difference between an obligation a public body published and what the body did. The obligation has to come from a statute, a regulation, a published service standard, a published policy, or official guidance the body issued itself. A complaint about how an official behaved is not a defect. A disagreement with a decision is not a defect. The body writing one thing and doing another is.

An entry is accepted on four conditions, all four, no exceptions.

1. The obligation is named, with its source, in the version in force on the day of the conduct.
2. The departure is proved by a document: the body's own letter, a file number, a dated page, a machine-readable record.
3. Anyone outside can reproduce the check, or a document fixes it permanently.
4. The class is stated.

How an entry is scored

Four axes, each from 0 to 3. The total sets the tier, and the tier sets the price. The score is published with the entry so that anyone can disagree with it in the open.

The price doubles where the defect comes from a rule the body applies to everyone it serves. It rises by half where the body does not correct the defect within 45 days of notice.

The entries

D-0001 · National Defence starts the statutory clock on the day it opens the file

Obligation. The Access to Information Act counts thirty days from the day the request is received by the institution.

Conduct. A request sent on 29 August 2026 was entered as received on 31 August 2026. The department declined to correct the date and gave its own rule for it: “a file is deemed received when it is entered into our system.”

Why it scores where it does. Reach 2, because the rule is not about one file and applies to every request the department receives. Harm 1, time and a shortened statutory clock. Absence of a remedy 2, because the only route is a complaint to the Information Commissioner, measured in months. Persistence 3, because the department stated the rule in writing and kept it after being told. Total 8, High, 400 dollars, doubled to 800 because the rule reaches everyone the programme serves.

Evidence. Files A-2026-01143, A-2026-01144 and A-2026-01154, and the department’s own written answer. Dates published in the register of requests.

D-0002 · Global Affairs Canada explains the thirty-day clock and leaves the date blank

Obligation. The same thirty days, and the department’s own acknowledgement, which sets out the period.

Conduct. On file A-2026-00736 the acknowledgement reads “received on .” and “within 30 days of .” Twice in one notice, with no date. The only fixed date on that file is the day the request left.

Why it scores where it does. Reach 1, one notice template. Harm 1, the requester cannot count the deadline the notice describes. Absence of a remedy 1, the department can correct it on request. Persistence 1, twice in the same document. Total 4, Medium, 100 dollars.

Evidence. The acknowledgement for A-2026-00736, quoted in the register of requests.

D-0003 · The Privy Council Office opened no file because an officer is away

Obligation. Thirty days from receipt by the institution. The statute counts from receipt, not from the day an officer returns to work.

Conduct. No file opened, no number issued, no date named. The reason given is that the officer with authority over the five-dollar fee is absent.

Why it scores where it does. Reach 1, everyone who files while that officer is away. Harm 1, the clock has no visible start. Absence of a remedy 2, the Information Commissioner. Persistence 1, stated once as a reason. Total 5, Medium, 100 dollars.

Evidence. The department’s written answer, recorded in the register of requests.

D-0004 · The federal contract register publishes every amendment as a contract

Obligation. The Government of Canada publishes every contract over 10,000 dollars as open data, for the public to use. Nothing in the documentation says amendment rows must be excluded from a sum, and no field carries the amount an amendment adds.

Conduct. Each amendment is published as a separate row carrying the whole value of the contract after the amendment. Summing the 1,313,540 published rows gives 1,232,280,189,662 dollars. Collapsed to one row per contract, the register holds 609,083,183,336 dollars. The sum of the rows overstates the real total by 102 per cent.

Why it scores where it does. Reach 3, national, and every person who uses the dataset. Harm 1, money and time, with no personal injury. Absence of a remedy 3, because no route exists for a member of the public to compel a publisher to correct an open dataset. Persistence 2, because the defect is built into how the register is produced. Total 9, High, 400 dollars.

Evidence and method. Reproducible from the public CSV. Full workings, including the second defect underneath it, are published in the finding.

Time is not the constraint

Two offices answered written demands on other files in twenty-seven hours and in twelve hours. Both are recorded, with file numbers, under where an authority reversed itself. A body that can move in twelve hours when it chooses cannot explain a missed deadline by the size of its workload.

Two lines, three roles

A defect in a rule is one entry no matter how many people it crossed. Every person it was applied to is a separate entry of their own. Both lines are paid.

• The finder describes the defect as a mechanism and proves the obligation. Full price of the tier.
• The person it was applied to shows it was applied to them, with a document. Their own entry, scored on their own harm, never less than a quarter of the price of the defect.
• The corroborator reproduces the defect in another office, another file, another date. A tenth of the price, for the first three.

Ten people recorded against one defect raise its reach by a point and the defect is scored again, upward, for everyone already on it. A duplicate is evidence, not noise. The only entry refused is an empty one: same defect, same body, no new case, no new date.

How to submit

Send it to [email protected], in either official language, with the obligation, its source, the document that proves the departure, and the class. No account, no fee, no credentials. Citizenship, immigration status, residence and age are irrelevant and are not asked.

Not accepted: material obtained by breaking into a system, another person’s personal information without their written consent, an opinion about how an employee behaved, and a claim with no document behind it. A refusal is written, with the reason.

Only material already public appears here. Nothing from a live proceeding is published while it is live. The drafted bill that would put this scheme into federal law, administered by an office that already exists and paid for out of the appropriation of the body at fault, is published here and is available in full to any parliamentarian or committee on request.

Citation: Danilo Dzyuban, “The registry” (8 September 2026), dzyuban.com/registry.