Review the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act — Issue No. 8

SPECIAL COMMITTEE TO REVIEW THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION AND PROTECTION OF PRIVACY ACT

Present: Don McRae, MLA (Chair); Doug Routley, MLA (Deputy Chair); Kathy Corrigan, MLA; David Eby, MLA; Eric Foster, MLA; Sam Sullivan, MLA; Jackie Tegart, MLA; John Yap, MLA

1. There not yet being a Chair elected to serve the Committee, the meeting was called to order at 11:00 a.m. by the Committee Clerk.

2. Resolved, that Don McRae, MLA, be elected Chair of the Special Committee to Review the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. (Doug Routley, MLA)

3. Resolved, that Doug Routley, MLA, be elected Deputy Chair of the Special Committee to Review the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. (Eric Foster, MLA)

The following electronic version is for informational purposes only.
The printed version remains the official version.

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SPECIAL COMMITTEE TO
REVIEW THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION AND PROTECTION OF PRIVACY ACT


CONTENTS
Page
Election of Chair and Deputy Chair	155
Committee Workplan and Meeting Schedule	155

S. Sourial (Committee Clerk): Good morning, committee members. As this is our first meeting of the fifth session and we do not have a Chair or Deputy Chair, I will look for nominations for Chair of the committee.

S. Sourial (Committee Clerk): Any further nominations? Any further nominations? Any further nominations?

D. McRae (Chair): Thank you very much. There will not be a long acceptance speech, but at this stage, I would be honoured to actually nominate the Deputy Chair. I would like to nominate Doug Routley, if I may.

Seeing no other names…. Do I have to call three times — first, second and third ask?

Doug, congratulations, and I look forward to a very long acceptance speech from yourself.

D. McRae (Chair): Thank you very much. And if I may say, I’ve been really pleased with the tone of the committee and the professionalism of the committee by the members to date. I know we’re having to go forward again one more time and have to recast the committee to the end of May.

I want to say thank you, as well, not just for the work you’ve done between our colleagues but with the individuals who’ve come forward. The questions have been phenomenal, the interest has been great, and I couldn’t ask for better members of the committee.

D. McRae (Chair): That being said, as well, just to give a global picture — Susan will remind me when I make some mistakes — we are tasked legislatively to be done our work by some time in late May. I think the exact date, off the top of my head, was May 24.

D. McRae (Chair): We do have a lot of work ahead of us, obviously. Most of the presentations are done, except for…. We still are waiting for the ministry to come back and make its final presentation. And the commissioner is coming back and making their final presentation, plus we have several meetings for deliberations.

Helen, who is already, I believe, working diligently on aspects of this, has a lot of work to do, sadly, to help us make sure we have a report that’s presentable to the Legislature. That being said, we need to make sure we have our consultations going forward.

Able to bring today…. Susan had brought them as well. We have copies of the recommendations in a small booklet form and a Coles Notes version as well — a two-pager. We cannot discuss them in this room. Obviously, the deliberations of the committee will be in camera, as per the rules, but I wanted to make sure people were given that information as quickly as possible.

If it’s okay with the vice-Chair, I just wanted to say that yesterday we had a conversation, subject to this committee being struck today, and just some thoughts about going forward. I was able to talk to some members yesterday before the end of the day, on our side, and maybe Doug was able to talk to some as well from others.

Today was being sort of tasked to be more of an organizational meeting, and then we are looking to see if we can, with the caucus chair’s approval from our side and with the opposition’s approval, basically set some dates going forward, at least for the next month, quickly, so we can get some work done. Then in April, when we’ll have more dates, once we get the first month workplan ahead of us, we’ll tidy it up with the second month workplan.

Tentatively, we were looking that on March 2, which is a Wednesday, here in Victoria we would have a review of the summary and submissions in this room from nine o’clock till noon — about three hours. Then the next week, it’s not possible to meet on Wednesday, but I would suggest we meet on Thursday, from 8 a.m. to 9:30, subject to it being working for all committee members — an hour and half to do the same thing.

On Wednesday, March 16, we would have again a briefing by the Ministry of Finance and the commissioner for three hours.

The last question I had for people is this. The last two weeks of March, because of spring break, a legislative
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tradition, we have a constituency week, or weeks in this case. I know there are some of us who have grandchildren we must see. Some of us have children — I’ll speak for myself and the member from Point Grey as well — and there may be plans that people have had to do things in the constituency or outside the constituency.

I’m open to seeing if we can find a day in that constituency week or weeks that we can meet in Vancouver to have a more fulsome discussion, especially knowing that we had just had presentations both by the ministry and the commissioner as well.

I’ll take some points, if people wish to, at that time. That being said, though, I don’t expect people to say that it’s a good or bad thing at this stage. You might want to look at your constituency plans. This is a hope, not a demand of the committee.

E. Foster: If I might suggest, on that two-week constituency time, rather than trying to set a bunch of dates and sending them out and sending them back, what if each member of the committee just sent in the dates that they were available? Then, if there’s one date that everybody, or most everybody, can hit, that would be the date.

It’s an awful lot of work for Susan to be emailing back and forth with all of us. I thought about this the last time — well, a different committee, but they were doing that. It might make it a little easier.

K. Corrigan: So you’re going to just send out that list to us of the March dates that you’re proposing, plus including the two weeks? That’ll be good.

D. McRae (Chair): You should have in front of you already a piece of paper that has March 2, 10 and 16, but the last date says the week of March 28. That was the vague one.

I just wanted to make sure we could canvass individuals to see if there was an ability to meet in Vancouver for anywhere up to six hours before, perhaps, our brains went to mush. I think six hours, if we could do that, might be a chance to really make sure….

Again, I don’t want to overload Helen, but I really want to make sure Helen has as much information from the committee to prepare her work. We really don’t have the ability to ask for an extension, whatsoever, in this committee. As you all know in politics, weeks go fast, and months go really, really fast if you’re not careful.

K. Corrigan: On that week of March 28, the Monday is Easter Monday. That’s not in any way a vacation day for constituency assistants or staff or anything like that, that week? Or is it?

E. Foster: It’s depending on the contract that people have. For most government employees, it would be a paid holiday, but it’s not a manufacturing day. It’s not a stat holiday.

D. McRae (Chair): Point well taken. We’ll take that into consideration because, obviously, we’ll need to have the Legislature staff here to support us as well, and there are rules that govern their work days and weeks.

S. Sourial (Committee Clerk): What I’ll do is send an email with the three March dates, confirming them and then asking members to get back to me with the dates that they’re free during the constituency weeks. Then we’ll go from there.

At this stage, according to my agenda, we’ve elected the Chair. We’ve elected the Deputy Chair. I wanted to give you, in this room, a sense of where we’re going for the next month, give you a chance to ponder. Either through the Deputy Chair or myself — and through Susan, of course — let us know if there are concerns going forward.

One other heads-up. At one stage in the conversation with the Deputy Chair, when the ministry is going to do its presentation, the new minister in charge of freedom of information, which is obviously the Minister of Finance, was willing to, with his staff, attend the meeting.

That being said, it becomes more and more difficult to see if we can have staff and the minister in the same room at the same time. At this stage, it is the number one priority of myself, if you agree, to make sure that ministry staff do the presentation. If the minister is able to attend at some stage, great. That’s with the approval of the Deputy Chair.

It is essential that we get the work of the ministry and the recommendations of the ministry as quickly as possible. That March 16 date…. As long as they’re able to attend, staff-wise, it’s almost a set-in-stone date for all of us. We just don’t have the weeks to play with.

K. Corrigan: Given that we’re very busy in this place, I would prefer to set some of the April dates as well, if that’s possible — at least tentative April dates. Maybe they’re going to be the Wednesday mornings again, but I think it would probably be worthwhile for us to do that — par-
[ Page 157 ]
ticularly if we’re going to try to use another break week to have further discussions.

D. McRae (Chair): My vision was that we would very quickly nail down — we’re talking by tomorrow — the March dates and then start working immediately on the April dates. It’s not a long discussion. It’s just that instead of having one big block of dates to work with, we’d get the first set done and then work on the next one. But I agree with you as well.

D. McRae (Chair): Susan, are there questions or issues that you have, from the staff point of view or the committee point of view, that I have not raised?

As I think the Chair mentioned, Helen has prepared summaries of the submissions received to date. Those summaries do not include the government submission and the Information and Privacy Commissioner’s response to the written submissions, as we haven’t received those yet. Then going forward, we will start by reviewing the summary of the recommendations and get some feel from committee members as to where they want to go with the recommendations, and we’ll work from there.

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Chair:	Don McRae (Comox Valley BC Liberal)
Deputy Chair:	Doug Routley (Nanaimo–North Cowichan NDP)
Members:	Kathy Corrigan (Burnaby–Deer Lake NDP)
	David Eby (Vancouver–Point Grey NDP)
	Eric Foster (Vernon-Monashee BC Liberal)
	Sam Sullivan (Vancouver–False Creek BC Liberal)
	Jackie Tegart (Fraser-Nicola BC Liberal)
	John Yap (Richmond-Steveston BC Liberal)
Clerk:	Susan Sourial

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS (Hansard)

SPECIAL COMMITTEE TO REVIEW THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION AND PROTECTION OF PRIVACY ACT

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SPECIAL COMMITTEE TO
REVIEW THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION AND PROTECTION OF PRIVACY ACT