According to a well-established expert, the Canadian access-to-information (ATI) regime is at a standstill and in a state of paralysis. In an Opinion Piece, Michel W. Drapeau, a lecturer at the Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa and the co-author of an authoritative legal textbook on Canadian access to information, contends that the Office of the Information Commissioner (OIC) is currently unable to perform its sole and unique role of investigating complaints from ATI users. In the process, the OIC has accumulated a two-year backlog of complaints, a high percentage of which dealing with straightforward delay complaints. This backlog permits several federal institutions to enjoy a two-year amnesty (extension) period to release records as no judicial recourse is possible until the OIC completes its investigation of a complaint. It also encourages many institutions to claim a range of exemptions, exclusions or exaggerated fees, which they would not otherwise be permitted under the act, knowing that under the circumstances it will take the OIC no less than the said two years to adjudicate an eventual complaint by a dissatisfied ATI user. Either way, requested records remain sealed until the OIC performs its investigative duties and makes findings, creating more and more illusory the Canadian quasi-constitutional „right of access‟ to government records within a 30-day statutory delay period.