The B.C. government will bar employees from triple-deleting emails and put career civil servants — not political staff — in charge of responding to information requests in ministers’ offices, Premier Christy Clark said Wednesday.
She made the announcement in response to a report by former privacy commissioner David Loukidelis that recommended sweeping improvements to the government’s record-keeping and freedom of information systems.
Loukidelis urged the government to pass legislation that would make it an offence to wilfully destroy records and would give the privacy commissioner authority to investigate the alleged unlawful destruction of records.
Clark said her government accepted all 27 of Loukidelis’s recommendations.
“The practice of ‘triple-deleting’ will be prohibited, ministers and political staff will continue to retain sent emails, and a new policy and specific training will be developed,” she said in a statement.
“As soon as practicable, public servants will be made responsible for the searching of records responsive to information requests on behalf of ministers and political staff.”
Clark said in an interview that employees will face sanctions if they are caught triple-deleting emails — a practice that wipes them from the government database.
“We’re not going to need legislation for that,” she said. “We will do that through policy.”
She also committed to passing duty-to-document legislation that will require government officials to keep records of key decisions. “It’s not a question of whether, it’s a question of how.”
Clark said she hopes that by acting on Loukidelis’s recommendations, B.C. will soon be “back at the forefront of being a really open and transparent government. Because we didn’t keep up and we’ve got to fix it.”
NDP Leader John Horgan said it will take more than Loukidelis’s report to restore the government’s credibility.
“I’m grateful that he met his deadline, but I don’t believe that it does enough to change the culture of delete that is endemic in the Christy Clark government,” he said.
Horgan said Clark should move immediately to adopt duty-to-document legislation rather than stalling for time. “I think that’s the biggest recommendation in the report and the biggest failure of the government.”
Loukidelis was hired in October to help the government respond to a damning report by privacy commissioner Elizabeth Denham, who found evidence that Clark’s political staff had abused the freedom of information law by destroying records, conducting negligent searches for records and failing to keep proper records.
Denham launched her probe in May after a former executive assistant in the Ministry of Transportation complained about the destruction of records related to the disappearance of women along Highway 16, known as the Highway of Tears.
The commissioner said in a statement Wednesday that she was pleased Loukidelis supported a ban on triple deleting emails.
“This action is an important first step in not only ensuring a permanent record exists, but in restoring public confidence in the access to information process,” she said.
