In its March 2012 Budget, the Harper government cut the operating budgets of federal departments and agencies by $9.67 million as part of its deficit reduction action plan. The budget of Library and Archives Canada (LAC) was reduced by $9.6 million over three years, an amount equal to about 10% of LAC’s total planned spending for 2012-13. On April 30, 2012, LAC sent notices to about 20% of its employees advising them that their positions could be eliminated and that they could be laid off.

In addition, in response to the cuts announced in the Budget and the results of recent strategic review exercises, the libraries in at least a dozen federal government departments are now being closed, or their staffs and services are being significantly reduced.

This includes the libraries at Agriculture Canada, Citizenship and Immigration Canada, Environment Canada, Health Canada, Human Resources and Skills Development Canada, Industry Canada, Transport Canada, the National Capital Commission, National Defence, Natural Resources Canada, Parks Canada, the Public Service Commission of Canada and Public Works and Government Services Canada.

The libraries in federal departments and agencies gather and preserve highly specialized information related to the mandates of their organizations which is often not available elsewhere. They  identify information sources, assess their credibility and relevance and provide access to sources in multiple formats for their clients. In so doing, they help ensure that decisions made by public service employees who are undertaking scientific research, delivering programs to Canadians or providing policy advice, are grounded in timely, authoritative information. 

Many federal libraries provide services to members of the public as well, such as academics seeking access to specialized information for research purposes, journalists and professional writers, teachers, students and Canadians investigating their family genealogy. 

Through their information management roles, federal libraries and LAC play a fundamental role in supporting government accountability to Canadians and ensuring that information is as accessible and useful as possible. There is growing awareness of the need to shift the focus from the quantity of information to its usability. No matter how plentiful, information that is not organized or not known about is not useable - and access to useable information is at the heart of a knowledge-based economy and society, as well as a neutral, professional public service and a transparent, accountable government. 

Losing services

As LAC itself notes in its Report on Plans and Priorities for 2012-13, the cuts are taking place in an already challenging environment. Digital technologies are fuelling an explosive growth in information and Canadians have heightened expectations about access to information resources in both digital and more traditional formats.

Members of the public will feel the effects of closures of libraries and reductions in services and opening hours both directly in terms of access and indirectly in terms of the quality of government decision making.

Indeed as part of its Modernization initiative and digitalization of archives, LAC’s “New Approach to Service-Delivery”, which took effect in February 2012, reduces in-person access to the archives and libraries. Moreover, the 20% of LAC’s employees that will be laid off includes 50% of the staff involved in digitization. This will have an obvious and inevitable impact for LAC in its ability to provide access to the archives in digital and traditional formats.

In addition, the National Archival Development Program (NADP) will be eliminated as part of the cuts. This program was administered by the Canadian Council of Archives (CCA) which had to close its office as a result. It oversees Archives Canada, a database which makes the material located in small archives across provinces and territories of the country accessible to the public. These smaller and local archives often do not have the capacity to function on their own and rely on grants from NADP, and are an important part of recording material of archival value at the local level and making it available to local communities.

For public servants, the cuts mean reductions in library services and in access to information resources they require to perform their jobs. Moreover, there are few prospects for accessing this information from other sources. Public servants may be able to use Inter-Library Loans, the system by which materials can be borrowed free of charge from government, university and public libraries across Canada, but the costs of processing and delivering materials borrowed by inter-library loan are borne mainly by local lending libraries. In addition, LAC recently announced that the current system will end in February 2013. 

Losing knowledge

A troubling implication is the likely wide-scale disposal of valuable, specialized information resources currently housed in federal libraries. Disposal is governed by the Library and Archives Canada Act and related policies and directives, including the Directive on Recordkeeping. According to these directives, information resources and other records that are determined to “no longer have operational value” may, at the discretion of the Librarian and Archivist of Canada, be disposed of by destruction, by transfer to LAC or by “alienation from the control of the Government of Canada”.

In practical terms, physical collections are the most expensive to manage and, in the digital age, will be the first candidates for disposal.

Given this, and while some degree of regular disposal is good library practice, significant destruction and “alienation” should be expected, especially given the inadequacies of the federal disposition and recordkeeping program, which are reflected in LAC’s plans to review the program over the next few years so that it can “more effectively deliver on its responsibilities toward disposition.”

In addition to this, another worrying consequence is that LAC and the libraries in departments and agencies may stop acquiring new material. The capacity of LAC to receive and provide access to materials, either physical or electronic, is already under tremendous stress, as witnessed by the years-long backlog in making archived government documents available through its collectionscanada.gc.ca initiative. In addition, LAC’s 10-month moratorium on purchasing new archival material, which expired in January 2010, has unofficially continued.

Processes of disposing of information resources and reducing or limiting new acquisitions are both a tremendous loss for recording past, current and future knowledge. 

Responses from Canadians

On May 28 2012, about 150 Canadian archivists organized a mock funeral, called “Archivists’ On to Ottawa Trek,” to protest the sweeping changes to LAC included in the federal government’s Budget bill. Their statement can be found online.

In May 2012, a campaign spearheaded by the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) called Save Library & Archives Canada, which had been launched in November 2011 in response to funding cuts, was reintroduced in order to inform the public about the implications of the 2012 cuts and to coordinate petitions and citizen responses.

Several provincial associations of librarians and archivists have decried the federal cuts through press releases and open-letters.

LAC and federal libraries, as well as local and provincial archives and libraries, are key preservers of Canada’s documentary heritage; they are also gateways to the future. They are fundamental to both informed decision making and good governance. In the 21^st century, the challenge is to prudently modernize them on behalf of Canadians, not dramatically dismantle them.

Relevant Dates:

• 2004: Library & Archives Canada (LAC) is created.
• February 13, 2012: LAC embraces a modernization strategy and implements a “New Approach to Service-Delivery” which sees operation hours of in-person services widely reduced.
• March 2012: The federal government announces in its 2012 Budget cuts of $9.6 million over three years to LAC, as well as cuts to the operating budgets of other federal departments and agencies, many of which have libraries.
• April 4-June 2012: Libraries in federal government departments are closing or seeing their staff reduced.
• April 30, 2012: LAC issues notices to about 20% of its permanent staff advising them that their positions could be eliminated and they could be laid off and also announces that the National Archival Development Program (NADP) will be eliminated.
• May 7, 2012: LAC declares that the Inter-Library Loans service will end in February 2013 and has not yet confirmed what program could replace this service.
• May 28, 2012: Canadian archivists organize a mock funeral march to Ottawa.