For the length of an engagement, I join your ATIP shop as an extra set of experienced hands — on your equipment, inside your security perimeter, where sensitive records belong. I take on the review and severing so your analysts can keep the rest of the queue moving. Not intake, not tasking. Just the severing, done right.
For ATIP offices across the public sector — federal institutions and Crown corporations alike: hands-on review and severing of your release packages, and advice on the process that produces them.
Working in your case-management and redaction tools, I go through the records page by page — identifying what must be protected and severing it cleanly and consistently across the package.
Every severance is mapped to the right provision so the decision holds up — to the requester, to the Commissioner, and on review.
You receive a finished release package with severances applied, citations attached, and a short recommendation note for your delegated decision-maker.
Standing up a new ATIP function, or improving one that's straining? I help departments map, streamline, and strengthen the process from intake through release — so files move faster and decisions hold up.
AdvisoryI'm there to take the review and severing off your team's plate — not to run intake, manage consultations, or coordinate tasking. Just the part that needs the most judgment, done alongside your analysts on your own systems, so nothing sensitive ever leaves your environment.
Set up like any term employee — your equipment, your network, your security. The records stay where they belong.
Scope, dates, and length — a defined block focused squarely on review and severing.
A department laptop, network access, and your case-management and redaction tools — inside your perimeter.
Line by line, applying the exemptions and exclusions consistently, alongside your analysts.
Severances applied and cited, with recommendations for your delegated decision-maker — who keeps the final call.
I work in defined term engagements, sized to your queue and deadlines. Worth talking dates and volume early so we can settle on the right structure and timing.
First Nations, organizations, and individuals have been stonewalled on federal records for decades — the records that substantiate claims, document what was done, and establish what's owed. I spent twenty years inside that system. I know where the records live, how they're held, and why they get withheld — and I put that to work getting them released.
I act on your behalf under the Access to Information Act and the Privacy Act — including the provisions written to let Indigenous governments and organizations research and validate claims — and frame each request to get past the usual delays and dead ends.
When records come back more black than white, I know which exemptions are being over-applied — and how to push back on them.
Missed deadlines and stonewalling go to the Information Commissioner. Departments answer differently when the requester knows the rules as well as they do.
Locating and assembling the records that specific claims, land claims, and historical grievances require — from CIRNAC, Indigenous Services, and Library and Archives Canada.
I'm a member of Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg. This work is personal as well as professional — an insider's knowledge of a system that has too often kept our communities on the outside of it.
Nathalie Forester · Kitigan Zibi AnishinabegOver twenty years inside the federal Access to Information and Privacy world — reviewing records, applying the Acts, and preparing packages that stand up to scrutiny.
After taking early retirement, I'm offering that experience directly to ATIP offices — in federal institutions, Crown corporations, and the wider public sector — that need reliable, judgment-heavy review without a permanent hire. For the term, I work as part of your team: careful, confidential, and done on time.
I'm also a member of Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg, which anchors a second stream of my practice: helping Indigenous clients get access to the federal records they're owed.
Tell me a little about the file — volume, deadline, and the kind of records involved — and I'll let you know how I can help.