The B.C. Liberal government quietly released on Monday one batch of documents related to the Highway of Tears that the information and privacy commissioner rapped officials for withholding.
Commissioner Elizabeth Denham focused attention on the government’s attitude to freedom of information with a report — Access Denied — that highlighted several cases where records were deleted, “triple-deleted” or not provided. She said she was deeply disappointed by the practices her investigation uncovered. FOI practices in Premier Christy Clark’s office contravened information law, and requests were coming back blank even though Denham found relevant emails.
It was the Highway of Tears issue that prompted the report. A former aide to Transportation Minister Todd Stone wrote to her this year recounting how a colleague took over his computer and deleted emails pertinent to an FOI request about the highway. Denham confirmed the whistleblower’s version and found also that the colleague had lied.
In the process of investigating, she also reviewed how another FOI request about the highway was handled. The NDP had asked for records of all meetings about missing women along the highway. The ministry eventually came back saying no records were located in response to the request.
In fact, the ministry had found 36 pages of documents related to dozens of meetings that were held along the Highway 16 corridor from Prince George to Prince Rupert.
But the government said they weren’t relevant because they were just about “transportation options and community needs.”
On Monday, 13 of the 36 pages were posted on the public “open information” website where all FOI responses are listed. Most of the pages were censored on grounds they related to policy advice, or disclosure would be harmful to intergovernmental relations or negotiations.
But on the intact pages there are references to missing women and the “highway of tears.”
One of them is a briefing note that states there is a consistent message from all the meetings in the communities that the “ongoing reference to Highway 16 as the Highway of Tears was seen as negative.” Some unidentified presenters “want assistance in helping communities to shed the moniker.”
“While there is respect, sympathy and concern for the victims, families and communities impacted by the murdered and missing women, it was felt that the communities couldn’t heal and move beyond this label as the message was constantly being reinforced through the media and some stakeholders.”
Another document is the notes from a meeting in Smithers: “Missing women must be part of the conversation as that is the only reason the Ministry of Transportation is in the room.”
Other points were that the current transportation system is inadequate. The context was that hitchhiking is a common factor in the disappearance of some of the women.
A similar note from a meeting in Vanderhoof read: “Highway of Tears is a catastrophe, but every day ‘mothers with kids face severe transportation options just to access the social safety net.’ ”
The released documents are fairly standard notes summarizing consultations about how to improve transportation options so that more women don’t resort to hitchhiking and wind up murdered or missing. But they were withheld because officials decided they were more about transportation options the communities need, rather than the reason they are so badly needed. The rationale given was that while missing women might have been mentioned at the meetings, they weren’t the main theme.
They only surfaced Monday after the commissioner did a full-scale investigation of how it was handled and demanded they be released. “Difficult to understand,” is how the commissioner described the thought process that led to the declaration the ministry had no records about meetings regarding missing women.
The commissioner found the ministry took an unreasonably narrow view of the request. It did locate and process the 36 pages. But after protracted internal debate, officials changed their original view and decided they weren’t responsive, without bothering to clarify with the applicant the nature of what records were being sought.
Almost a full year after the request was initially made, it’s a glimpse of how grudgingly routine documents are divulged, when they’re divulged at all.
