The Canadian government charged taxpayers $39 million to hire private contractors for the purposes of processing and "blacking out" documents requested by the public. Several companies received millions of dollars for their 'censorship' work.

An Inquiry of Ministry requested by Conservative MP Kelly McCauley shows “contracts provided to consultants related to the processing of requests made under the Access To Information Act since January 1, 2020.” The contracts ranged from $15,000 to nearly $200,000 in paid work. 

The federal government justified relying on private contractors in order to “reduce the current backlog of Access To Information requests which have accumulated over several years." So, the government has hired, according to them, private contractors to help with transparency, when in fact it seems like they've been hired to do the exact opposite.