With the B.C. Liberal government’s track record of minimizing its track record on sensitive issues now fully exposed, the next step is to see if anything changes.
Information and privacy commissioner Elizabeth Denham’s triple-header last week outlined three separate cases of wilful deletion of records that were subject to freedom-of-information requests.
The Opposition this week came up with more questionable cases where requests for information came back suspiciously void of anything. The combination has turned triple-deleting and email purging into the dominant issue of the fall sitting of the legislature.
But it’s been standard operating procedure for years. Government officials over time have become more and more careful about not writing down anything that might come back to haunt them. So the routine requests for information have increasingly prompted responses along the lines of “no records responsive to your request.”
There was a time when FOI requests used to result in reams of documents with all the important or interesting information blacked out. So applicants would get nothing relevant, but the requests would at least establish that there were documents of some kind involved in the decision-making. The more common response over the past few years is to simply deny there are any records at all.
Denham has blown the whistle numerous times about the increasing use of that dodge. And the NDP Opposition has reacted by filing increasingly sophisticated requests. When they get nothing in response, they request other tracking records, or inquire of other offices. The techniques have the effect of triangulating the absurdity of senior officials’ claims that they have nothing in their files on major issues that crossed their desks.
The government is now boxed into a position where it’s either routinely ignoring FOI law by deleting records that should have been kept, or is simply refusing to divulge them on request.
Although the argument has festered for years, it looks as if this time around, something might actually happen to curb some of the avoidance techniques.
A few developments suggest the stalemate will be broken.
The first is Premier Christy Clark’s appointment of David Loukidelis to the job of overseeing compliance with Denham’s recommendations. Although it looks ridiculous to hire someone to figure out how to do what the commissioner is telling them to do, it is a suggestion the government is taking recommendations seriously for a change.
Loukidelis is a former information and privacy commissioner himself, so he knows the nuts and bolts of how the law is supposed to work. And he used to routinely rap the government for laggard responses, so he knows how the government actually reacts to the law.
The other development concerns Ombudsperson Jay Chalke. After a series of manoeuvres last summer, he was tasked with probing the notorious firings of eight health researchers, a scandal that has dogged government for several years.
This week, the Opposition said it asked last year for all the records on the issue from relevant offices and got back one censored email.
Clark told the NDP they were wrong to suggest there were no documents. “There are, and they have been passed on to the ombudsman’s office. And they will all be released publicly. When the ombudsman is finished his work, those will be released.”
So requests for records on the case from key officials who would have been deeply involved turned up next to nothing. But a volume of records was freely handed over to the ombudsperson.
Chalke got almost a million dollars added to his budget to review the firings and even got the law rewritten in short order to beef up his powers to compel testimony. His main focus will be on the firings, but there might be some interesting sidelights on who had what records when, and why they weren’t divulged when they were requested.
There’s similar potential in an auditor general’s review of the health firings that is underway.
The government has boxed itself into a corner by routinely denying documents exist.
Some do exist and they are now in the hands of someone who can go as far he likes in exposing the culture of secrecy.
