Richard McGuire
A news report surfaced last week that a former executive assistant to B.C. Transportation and Infrastructure Minister Todd Stone was ordered to delete emails to keep them from being made public.
The assistant, Tim Duncan, wrote a letter on May 18 to Information and Privacy Commissioner Elizabeth Denham describing his experience of being ordered to delete emails about missing women on the “Highway of Tears” in northern B.C.
Deleting of emails in order to avoid releasing them to a Freedom of Information (FOI) inquiry is of course a serious offence.
Duncan told Denham that when he hesitated to delete the messages in the November 2014 incident, a ministerial assistant came to his desk, took the keyboard and deleted them himself.
When he later questioned the appropriateness of deleting emails after an FOI request, he says the B.C. Liberal Research Director brushed off his concerns and said: “It’s like in the West Wing. You do whatever it takes to win.”
It’s not really surprising that this happened. It’s more surprising that this story came to light. I suspect that the destruction of embarrassing information by government happens regularly.
Duncan told CBC that he hears stories of this happening in other offices and he believes this kind of abuse is widespread. Many of his colleagues have thousands of emails and when they get an FOI request, they delete the relevant emails, he said.
We journalists are especially concerned about this, but it should worry everyone who believes in holding governments to account.
The B.C. Freedom of Information and Privacy Association (FIPA) is a group that tries to stand up for the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA) in the face of a provincial government that seems determined to circumvent it.
“If these allegations are correct, this is a serious escalation of a growing and deeply disturbing trend,” says B.C. FIPA Executive Director Vincent Gogolek. “The B.C. Government has a legal duty to assist FOI requesters. What appears to be happening is the government is actively working to block the release of information that people have a right to request.”
Increasingly, journalists, opposition parties and members of the public are simply told that records do not exist when they file an FOI request. Or they are quoted unreasonable fees. Or the requests are met by stalling and lengthy delays.
Last year an analysis by the Canadian Press found that 20 per cent of requests for public information resulted in no records being found.
In 2012, Information and Privacy Commissioner Denham found the office of Premier Christy Clark to be the worst offender, with 45 per cent of FOI requests failing to find records.
Unfortunately, this is not the only way the government tries to keep the public in the dark.
When I began working as a journalist in the 1980s, we could simply pick up the phone and call a government scientist to get information on important stories affecting the public. Those days are gone. Now we have to go through media relations staff, who make sure every message is filtered, vetted and approved. Typically, they lack the expertise of the scientists and others who could give us the information directly.
In fairness, some are quite helpful, and some have allowed me to speak directly to scientists after I tell them what I want. More often than not, however, government media relations people simply send a few short “talking point” bullets that do little to inform the public.
The B.C. Liberal government is certainly not the only government that tries to keep its activities away from the public eye, or to present only a filtered version.
The Conservative federal government in Ottawa has gone to enormous lengths to muzzle its scientists and to keep them from talking publicly about embarrassing topics like climate change.
Last week’s Highway of Tears email incident was only the tip of a much larger and growing problem of government secrecy.
The philosophy of treating the public like mushrooms – keeping them in the dark and feeding them manure – is alive and well. And the loser is our democracy.
Richard McGuire is a reporter/photographer with the Osoyoos Times. He has worked on both sides of access to information laws, in government and as researcher and journalist.
