I don't believe that Canada is behind many countries. We are behind the U.S. and the U.K. on open data. The U.S. went out very strongly shortly after President Obama was inaugurated, and the U.K. followed shortly afterward with their open data initiative; however, from a freedom of information or an access perspective, Canada was there long before the U.K. was. Our access to information and proactive disclosure regime is really outstanding. We continue to make a lot of information available to Canadians.
On February 9th, 2011. See this statement in context.