About the project

Open By Default is the biggest database of internal government documents never before made publicly accessible, and we're still adding more records. All our records come from access to information requests released by the federal government.

Our goal is to strengthen democracy by giving all Canadians easy and immediate access to the information governments use to make decisions.

Want to know how the government discusses climate change, taxes or house prices? You can do keyword searches using the search bar. You can also filter for records from a specific year or department. Not sure where to start? Check out our handful of records for “caribou meat” or the plethora we have for “Justin Trudeau.”