In both Canada and the United States, public records are broadly defined as material produced by a governmental department or agency in the course of its activity. The Presidential Records Act of 1978 requires the unitary American executive to conform to this definition. Documents generated by Canada's collegial executive, whose members are drawn from the majority party in Parliament, are not, however, uniformly classifiable as public records to which timely access might be granted under freedom-ofinformation (FOI) legislation. For several reasons the Canadian situation is somewhat more complicated than the American: (1) maintenance of cabinet solidarity demands that a certain amount of official secrecy surround cabinet deliberations and that confidentiality be preserved for a considerable period; (2) the anonymity of public servants in a parliamentary system must be protected so that they may advise their ministers fully, frankly, and in confidence without involving themselves in the political process; (3) ministerial papers, distinguished both from the records of departments over which ministers preside and from cabinet documents, remain the private property of cabinet members, although they contain many public documents that would assist subsequent holders of the portfolio in carrying out their duties. Canadian political traditions have influenced the definition of what constitutes a public document and the extent to which access is permitted to material so defined among departmental records, cabinet documents, and ministerial papers. Handling of all three types by the Public Archives of Canada (PAC) depends, in turn, on procedures devised by a parliamentary system attempting to balance public demands for government information with concern for its own integrity. Analysis of Canadian access regulations thus reveals several contrasts with