My Experience As A Requestor
As part of an academic research project, I filed two freedom of information requests in May 2018. The initial 30 day deadline was extended once. After that, I received no correspondence for some time.
I received the documents for my first request in June 2021 – 3 full years after filing. I never did receive the second request.
When the documents came, the cover letter cited numerous exemptions for which some documents were not disclosed. It gave no indication of what kind of documents or how many were withheld, but simply listed sections of the Act.
By the time I received this response, the scholarly article for which the request was made had long since been finished. They came too late to be put to much use.

Potential Improvements
I am far from the only requestor to experience major delays in getting a response. The timeline obligations under the Act need to be meaningfully enforced, and it seems to me that a delay such as the one I experience renders the right to access of information nearly meaningless.
Two more simple improvements I would suggest are:
Digital Request Tracking – My only way to follow up on my delayed request was to personally contact an ATIP officer and rely on what they verbally told me. Some sort of online system, as is common in other parts of government (applications, licenses, Canada Post) would be of use. It would provide more transparency about deadlines and extensions.
Requiring Public Bodies to Particularize What Documents They Withhold – I am at a loss as to how one understands or challenges redactions when one does not know what has been held back. One straightforward answer is what is already commonly done in the litigation discovery process. The public body would provide a list of all documents that were relevant to the request. It would identify which documents were not disclosed, and for which reasons. That way, the requestor knows how much they got and did not get. This still preserves the important privacy, security or so forth interests that require it to be withheld. However, it gives the requestor more ability to understand whether the criteria in the Act were properly applied.

Thank you for the opportunity to participate in this process.