“Genealogy” and “census” are missing in the LAC 2025-26 Departmental Plan

Following the 31 May blog post, ‘LAC’s Budget: Focus on Access in 2025-26 Main Estimates,’ more details in the LAC 2025–26 Departmental Plan have become available.

Despite genealogists reportedly being the largest single client group at Library and Archives Canada, the words “genealogy” and “census” are missing. “History” appears six times. “AI” is mentioned three times.

The Plan outlines three core responsibilities; here, we focus on the results indicators for the second, which is providing comprehensive access to Canada’s documentary heritage. 

A significant component involves enhancing digital accessibility. Since 2021-22, LAC has grown its digitization efforts, from 2.4 million images in 2021-22 to 5.7 million in 2023-24. Statistics for 2024-25 are not provided; however, the 2025-26 target of 5.8 million images represents only a modest increase over the 2023-24 achievement.

This slower growth is attributed to sunsetting the Indian Day School Project.

As only a small fraction of LAC’s vast holdings are currently digitized, one must ask why a greater priority is not being given to digitization and online availability. More could be done to make the holdings available without requiring travel to a physical outlet. It can be done. Recall that 4.8 million images were digitized in 2018-2019, declining from 10.2 million and 9.3 million in the previous two years.

The number of unique visitors to LAC’s website and online applications has been decreasing in recent years. An ambitious target of 3 million is set for 2025-26, to be achieved by making online platforms easier to use, more comprehensive, and more widely promoted, thereby attracting and retaining a larger digital audience.

The target for the number of service transactions onsite and remotely performed from LAC’s physical service points is within the historic range.

A favourable trend in the percentage of ATIP requests processed compared to the total requests is reported. While the trend is expected to continue, targeting 70% still leaves a significant gap. And the delay for non-ATIP requests is reported to often stretch for years.

The table of the remaining indicators for providing comprehensive access to Canada’s documentary heritage is:

Notably, LAC is placing less emphasis on reaching people at exhibitions and events.

This is an opportune time to inquire why the largest client group is not a top priority for LAC. Could it be owing to the lack of a customer advisory panel? Various peer organizations have similar groups. LAC has had at least two such incarnations. They failed as a proper effort was not made to engage. Information flowed to the panel, but LAC was deaf to the client’s input. LAC was repeatedly advised of the value of digitized newspapers for genealogy and broader history. The suggestion was not acted on. That’s why Canada, unlike many other countries, has no central newspaper digitization program.