A committee will be going over BC’s Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act with a fine-tooth comb over the next few months.
Nanaimo-North Cowichan MLA Doug Routley is Deputy Chair of the all-party committee taking on the challenge. Routley is also the NDP’s FOI Critic.
“Freedom of information and privacy protection law needs to keep up with the changing times in terms technology, and difefrent ways of storing information. When the law was brought in by the NDP in 1992/93, it was part of the legislation that every six years, a committee would be struck to review and update the legislation.”
Routley says they recently discovered several cases where the Liberals deleted emails after FOI requests were filed, to avoid having to release the information. He also says the provincial government isn’t even required to keep records.
“There’s no duty to document on the part of government, in other words they can go about business without keeping records. We would like to see duty to document imposed upon government, and there should be penalties for mishandling information.”
The public can weigh in on the consultation process online until the end of January, and there will be public hearings in Victoria and Vancouver in October.
