Second Session, 42nd Parliament (2021)
OFFICIAL REPORT
OF DEBATES
(HANSARD)
Tuesday, October 19, 2021
Afternoon Sitting
Issue No. 109
ISSN 1499-2175
The HTML transcript is provided for informational purposes only.
The PDF transcript remains the official digital version.
CONTENTS
| Orders of the Day | |
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 19, 2021
The House met at 1:32 p.m.
[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]
Orders of the Day
Hon. M. Farnworth: I call continued second reading debate, Bill 22.
Second Reading of Bills
BILL 22 — FREEDOM OF INFORMATION AND
PROTECTION OF PRIVACY
AMENDMENT ACT, 2021
(continued)
S. Cadieux: I’m pleased to speak to this Bill 22, the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Amendment Act, today.
[N. Letnick in the chair.]
I reflect back on this because, in 2009 when I was first elected, some of the first work I did as an MLA was on the committee that reviewed FOIPPA, at the time, and provided advice to government on necessary changes and then followed that up with chairing the committee to appoint the Privacy Commissioner at that stage.
I’m really pleased today to be able to speak about this bill. I, for one, have always placed a great deal of both value and importance on freedom of information. I know, as an elected official, that is not always popular. The act itself and abiding by it is not always easy, but it doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing. It’s incredibly important to our democracy.
As minister, in 2011 — in my six-month stint as the Minister of Labour, Citizens Services and Open Government — I was really proud when we launched the Open Information platform and the open data platform in British Columbia. That allowed for the routine disclosure of a lot of information that previously had to be FOI’d.
Again, not everybody liked that. Not everybody was comfortable with it at the time. It was seen by critics as something that they were cautiously optimistic about. “It was a good first step,” I think, was some of the language used to describe it.
It was uncomfortable for members of government, I would say, at the time, because government has to make tough decisions. Government makes those decisions and does the work on behalf of the people. Sometimes they get it right, and sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they get called out for things that they’ve done. It’s not easy when you’re in the position of answering for that. But it’s the right process in our democracy.
I don’t think the public should expect government to get it all right all the time. Government is representation of the people, by the people, for the people. We’re not perfect as humans. We make mistakes. But generally, I would say, all of us, regardless of our political leanings, are trying to do the best job we can for the people of British Columbia.
The people of British Columbia have a right to access the information held by their government. They also have the right to have their personal information in government’s hands held with the strictest of confidence and safety.
In 2011, when we moved to disclose more things proactively, I think it was a good start. When we opened government’s data up to people — researchers, universities, the media — for people who wanted to use that data, I think that was a good step. I’m sure in the years following, more has happened and more has been released, and I’m sure, I am aware, there have still been calls for more. It will never meet all of the needs or desires, I think, of some advocates, and that’s okay too.
Today we’re debating a bill that is being tabled at a really concerning time. We’re dealing with a government that has taken, or it would appear to be a government that has taken, great strides to strip away transparency and accountability rather than improve it. Just today in question period, we heard about a number of those circumstances. British Columbians — the media, members of the opposition — are waiting months, even years, for responses for documents requested through FOI, documents they are entitled to.
It’s challenging, I understand, sometimes, for governments to process all of the documents. We see that and we hear about how difficult it is, and there are so many things to do, and it just takes so much time and people are so unreasonable in their requests. The reality is if government didn’t hold on so tightly to those documents, people wouldn’t have to request them at all.
Here we have a bill coming forward to make amendments to the Freedom of Information and Privacy Act, and government is ignoring all of the advice of the last all-party task force to review the act. They’re ignoring the fact that that all-party task force said fees should not be a barrier. There is an all-party committee, constituted just in June, that has yet to be able to complete its work, but government is choosing to bring this bill forward now instead.
What does that say to a committee of members of this House who were tasked with looking at this? Guess they don’t matter. Guess the opinions of that committee — the work that they would undertake with the public — doesn’t matter. Government knows better. Well, that’s not usually something you hear the public say.
There is a member of the government who was previously the critic for this file, and he’s had lots to say over the years on FOIPPA and on FOI and, when he was a critic, on all of the things that needed to be better. In fact, in 2017, the member for Nanaimo–North Cowichan said that his party, if elected, would improve things a lot. He said that government would release so much more information so regularly that there would no longer be a need for FOI requests. He said that the benefit of releasing the requests as they are processed — so proactive disclosure — would save those making submissions from the effort and expense in fees of making requests.
That government — his government — if elected, would enact legislation imposing a duty to document. It would enact penalties for failing to observe FOI legislation and waive fees when government didn’t meet mandated timelines for releasing materials.
I will wait with bated breath to see that member stand in this House and support this legislation today, because it does none of those things. In fact, it adds a fee. It adds a barrier to accessing the information that should be publicly available. Now, yes, there have always been fees for large requests that can be issued by government after the assessment of a request, etc., but this is just for the right to ask for something. This is telling the public: “You don’t have a right to access government information unless you first pay a fee.” I don’t think that’s right.
As we move through the things that this bill does…. I’m going to go back a second. We have a committee that’s supposed to be reviewing the act. The B.C. Freedom of Information and Privacy Association is quoted this week saying: “They just undermined the public consultation process through the Legislature. Making unilateral changes rather than implementing the recommendations of a current or previous all-party task force. Great way to say one thing and do another. The B.C. NDP attack transparency.” That’s what this is about. It’s about making it harder for the public to get information from government.
We’re in a pandemic. There are lots of concerns about what we do and don’t know about government’s actions, about our hospitals, our capacity, our schools. Government wants to make it harder for people to ask for information.
Now, as I said a minute ago, the former critic said that government would bring forward a duty to document legislation. They haven’t. But not only do we not have a duty to document legislation; we also, with this bill, don’t have a duty to preserve. The bill doesn’t include provisions to prevent documents from being destroyed prior to requests.
The Information and Privacy Commissioner is concerned about that, very concerned about that, and says: “If somebody destroys records because they think they might be of interest but wants to destroy them before any request is made, there’s no offence for that. That can’t be right. It needs to change. It’s an offence in Alberta. It could have been easily put in place here.” Michael McEvoy, Information and Privacy Commissioner.
Government is not listening to the independent officer of this Legislature, put in place by this Legislature to uphold this act. That’s something.
So on to that fee again. The government’s plan is to add an application fee to every single FOI request. Anyone filing a freedom-of-information request that isn’t for their own personal information will be subject to a charge for every request they make. The minister is trying to sell it as a nominal fee — no big deal — to recoup the costs associated with filing. There is no cost associated to filing. It’s ridiculous.
Not only does the minister seem to misunderstand the process of FOI, but it’s also disingenuous to say that the fee won’t be a barrier to access. In fact, the Minister of Indigenous Relations had this to say about fees for applications: “This is a really simple one.” Now, here, he’s referring to the federal act. “The act requires people to pay a fee, a tollgate fee on the public’s right to know, of $5. It’s a tollgate fee which costs the government, by testimony, if it’s a cheque, $55 to process. While it seems bizarre in terms of the economics, it should also be seen as an obstacle that doesn’t exist in most provincial freedom of information laws.”
A member of that government’s cabinet fought against fees, federally, and is now sitting in the government that is choosing to impose the very same thing. It’s interesting. It’s also interesting, the language, because we have a government that on regular occasion likes to shout from the rooftops that they removed the tolls from the bridge. They removed the tolls, and now this government wants to toll the freedom-of-information highway. That’s what they’re doing.
A fee is a targeted effort to discourage people from being able to hold government to account — not just private citizens but the opposition — to try to keep us from doing our job of holding government to account. Our legislative duty.
The media, from their sworn duty to uphold the truth and ask difficult questions…. A fee to file. Now, again, government might like to characterize this as a nuisance fee to try and dissuade people from making too many requests.
There is a simple solution. Just proactively disclose the information. Make the information government holds available to the public. We started that process. It would appear this government would like to pull it back.
Even before we began debate on this bill today, the public and the media have been making their feelings known. They’re not happy, not happy at all — pages of quotes of journalists concerned about this tightening of a hold on information that government wants to have. I’m not going to quote all of the journalists, because they have plenty of space to do that for themselves.
I think it’s important that we recognize that government is bringing in an act without taking the advice of the previous committee that was tasked with reviewing the act and who made recommendations to ensure that fees not become a barrier. It’s bringing in legislation against and despite significant concerns of the Information and Privacy Commissioner, bringing in legislation while another committee has been struck to look at it.
It’s distasteful that government sees that now is the time to tighten up their control on information that is in the public interest when so many important pieces of information have been held by this government and only been made public through FOI — like the health authority expense scandal just recently, the concealing of hospital outbreaks, the concealing of care home deaths, the concealing of the costs added by CBA agreements and parents forced to file FOI requests to try and understand what is going on with COVID in their children’s schools so they can protect them.
Freedom of information is important. Protection of privacy is important. It may not always be comfortable for government, but government shouldn’t have the ability to make it harder for people to access what is already difficult.
Question of Privilege
(Reservation of Right)
A. Olsen: I reserve my right to raise a question of privilege regarding Bill 22 and the work of the Special Committee to Review the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.
Debate Continued
M. Dykeman: It’s a privilege to rise in the House today to speak on this bill.
I have to say that listening to the members opposite speak today on this bill has left me quite shocked. The reason why is that these are important changes, and we’re here to discuss them, and this debate is important. But the sort of pall that it’s being cast in is that this is somehow preventing individuals or others from being able to access information. I argue the complete opposite.
I do find it shocking coming from the opposition. The reason why is that if we look back at the history of the opposition, we have the 2014 ICBC report, which was kept under wraps and ended up costing B.C. residents more than $1 billion and putting the health of ICBC at risk. The Attorney General had written the Leader of the Opposition at that time to compel the former Finance Minister to release the entire report and act on key recommendations, and the government ended up deleting those recommendations.
We have the triple-delete scandal where before they were opposition, the previous government’s approach to transparency, really, can be summed up in three words which were delete, delete, delete, and when asked about this practice, said: “Well, I’ve triple deleted my emails from time to time, and some emails are deleted, and some are kept.” That doesn’t sound very transparent, right?
Then we also have the situation where other records haven’t been released either, when asked for. It was just sort of like: “Well, those records aren’t there.”
I served on the school board, as I’ve mentioned in this House before, and one of the challenges that we faced as a school district was a rising amount of requests for information. These weren’t individuals. One thing about this legislation is it’s not going to be charging a fee for access for individuals that would like their private information. It’s for these larger requests and requests from people, like organizations.
What was happening was, as a school district, we were seeing a rising number of requests, and there was a real, measurable cost to this. Opposition should remember that this is not a new discussion. If we go back to 2012, the then Minister of Labour, Citizens’ Services and Open Government was talking about $49,000 in total fees collected for a program that actually cost $10 million to administer. So the opposition at one time was defending the fact that some costs needed to be brought in to recoup the extensive amount that this costs governments.
As a school board trustee, I remember our staff coming and saying: “Look, we are just under immense pressure here. We have rising numbers of requests coming in. We are in a position where we’re probably going to have to face having somebody come in to help us administer all of these.”
This is something that’s being felt around different levels of government. So approximately 40 percent of requests are for personal records, which people are not charged for. These proposed amendments won’t change this. It’s introducing a modest application fee for non-personal FOI requests.
Interjection.
M. Dykeman: Yeah, they should, but there are costs. Now, the thing is that the average cost to government for processing a single FOI request is $3,000. Those large, complex requests can exceed this. Fees to produce records are collected on less than 2 percent of FOI requests.
As I said earlier, approximately 40 percent of those are for personal records. People are not charged for this, and they will not be charged. So the province has processed more than 10,000 FOI requests annually with the volume of requests increasing by more than 40 percent over a two-year period, reaching an all-time high of more than 13,000 requests in the 2019-2020 year — a total of 13,055.
These are important things to recognize. This is a small fee to help offset some of the costs. That’s something that taxpayers, individuals, that want to request their information have access to. Taxpayers also know that there are rising costs of government, and sometimes you have to offset some of those.
That’s something that I think we spent an incredible amount of time on. There’s been an incredible amount of casting it as if it’s somehow obstructionist, and that’s simply not the case or the intent. Now, one thing that we should celebrate, and it hasn’t been brought up, and I’m really excited to talk about, is the increase in transparency of this government.
The minister who’s introduced this legislation…. Our government has more than doubled the number of proactive disclosures. This minister has put out their estimates notes, corporate transition binders, minister’s transition binders, deputy minister’s transition, expense summaries, purchasing cards, business transaction, account expenditures.
There have been summaries of open and closed freedom-of-information request records released in response to a freedom-of-information request — gaming grants, ministers’ and deputy ministers’ calendars, directly awarded contracts, travel receipts, contracts with values over $10,000, summaries of alternative service delivery contracts.
In the ones that I read first, there is an increase, more than double proactive releases. This is something which the opposition laughing about is almost hysterical, because it’s like the exact opposite. Instead of triple-deleting them, we’re proactively releasing them. So enough on that. I think we should get to some of the more exciting thing that are taking place in this legislation.
The past two years certainly have had a significant impact on how we communicate, how our students and adults are learning, attending meetings, appointments, even our work as MLAs. Even our swearing in was vastly different, taking place on Zoom. I have to say, after two years, I certainly didn’t want to see Zoom again. But what this did was actually make me appreciate some of the opportunities that we have here.
I grew up in a house that really only had a couple of programs that went on all day — TV shows. With my mom, she was a redhead, so you certainly didn’t have a lot of say on what TV shows were on. You watched what she was putting on. They rotated between Star Trek, Monty Python, Fawlty Towers and ’Allo ’Allo. Sometimes, if we were lucky, we got Jeopardy. But that was it. There was nothing else going on in this house. That’s okay.
What was really cool about it was with Star Trek…. I used to sit there and say: “Wow, that’s really cool. Imagine if we had access to some of this technology.” I realize that at the end of the pandemic, I still can’t get something to materialize hot tea in front of me, but we certainly have accessed some really interesting technology that a long time ago would have only been something we could dream of.
Our students this pandemic — obviously, we’ve had other pandemics in history — have been in such a fortunate place. They’ve been able to stay connected in a way that a number of years ago you wouldn’t have been able to. They were able to still visit with their classmates and see them and have two-way conversations. They were able to still stay connected, in some way, with their teachers.
I’m a 4-H leader, and my 4-H members were still able to meet with each other. We actually did a lot of judging of animals. We could see a child with their llama or their chicken or whatever. It wasn’t the same, but the point is that that technology opened up so many opportunities for us to stay connected. It didn’t matter where your family lived in the world; you could still see them.
It also showed us in some ways, too, how that’s not really a substitute. You can see the person. In some ways, it was sadder, because you didn’t have the connection, but it certainly was much better than having no connection.
There are elements with efficiency and environmental considerations and everything that we’re going to keep going forward. This bill allows us to maintain some of the good by updating FOIPPA’s data residency provisions so that public bodies can use those modern tools while protecting personal information.
Enhancing public sector privacy protections and increasing accountability by implementing mandatory privacy breach reporting. Increasing penalties and adding new offences. We’re securing people’s privacy while still maintaining and allowing these technological changes that have taken place and the important utility of these technological advances to be able to stay in place.
I remember, once again, on school board. Without these changes…. We had teachers who wanted to be able to access certain programs. I remember there was a marking one. Unfortunately, due to the FOIPPA restrictions, those teachers weren’t able to use those programs. There would have needed to be these legislative changes for them to be able to take advantage of these changes. It’s been a long time since this legislation’s been updated, and it hasn’t kept up with the technological changes.
Those technological changes, I think, have certainly been spurred as we’ve been dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, because it’s changed the way we live, we work and we connect with loved ones and how we access services like doctors.
How neat is that, to be able to just log on? You’ve got your doctor there, and they can see you. It’s certainly not perfect. It’s not a change, but for certain things, it certainly makes sense — you know, the non-emergency day-to-day things. How wonderful it is to have that flexibility? This legislation will allow for that — updating those data residency provisions.
It also helps with our commitment to diversity and inclusion, reconciliation and equity, by increasing information and sharing with Indigenous peoples, adding Indigenous cultural protections and removing non-inclusive language.
I know in the news release, for those of you that have seen it, there’s been lots of excitement surrounding this. I can tell you that post-secondary institutions and schools…. In my former role, we talked lots about the restrictions but also just the load, the load of these large applications coming through. Although, unfortunately, today we’ve had some of these changes cast in such a way that, like as I mentioned earlier, they’re obstructionist, they’re going to put up a massive wall….
The point is that you have to look at the larger picture and look at the fact that organizations are dealing with so many changes, from needing changes in the legislation to allow people to benefit from technological advancements but also dealing with the fact that there is a real cost to some of the applications. That’s what this legislation looks at. It looks at the necessary balance that needs to take place to be effective in the role as government.
As I mentioned earlier, these are not new debates. Back in 2006 and 2012, these debates were taking place.
These are small changes that will make a big difference in the lives of British Columbians and still allow individuals to access data, which, in a free and democratic society, absolutely people should be able to do, and for organizations, they absolutely should be able to access that information. That nominal fee is in there to help offset some of those costs.
When you couple that with our government’s commitment to being so proactive in releasing documents — twice as many documents proactively have been released — that puts in the balance that needs to be put in to ensure that people have access to what they need. A lot of it they can access by going on and looking at the proactively released documents.
It really was wonderful to be able to rise to talk about how these changes will help us keep up with the changes that we’ve encountered from COVID-19, how we work and live and connect with people, while also looking at the challenges faced by organizations and addressing some of the obstacles that have come from administering such a large demand of documents and also looking at how we have changed the face of that by proactively releasing so many documents ahead of time.
I’d like to thank you, hon. Speaker, for the opportunity to speak on this. With that, I will take my seat.
B. Stewart: I think that it’s important to hear both sides of the House on this particular topic. It’s something that is very engaging with the public. The public themselves are very interested in the protection of privacy as well as having access to it.
I think one of the things that people fail to remember is the history of where we have come from and the fact that we’ve moved from a paper-based system to something that’s electronic.
There have been a lot of incidents along the way that have made us question how and where we store data and how it’s done in British Columbia, protecting the records — health records, as we all know, but the records of government — and the important things that sometimes we need to go back and look at to make certain there’s complete transparency in terms of the protection of the public interest and people’s information.
I think one of the things that really kind of got British Columbia and really catapulted us into the forefront was that back in 2004, we made changes to the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. One of the reasons…. What triggered that was the fact that there was 9/11.
Of course, with 9/11, I know the Americans were very critical of their own agencies’ intelligence, etc., about the access to data and making certain they had access — that there weren’t these barriers that were in line that prevented people from actually being in a situation where they were trading information, whether in those days it was on cell phones or by computers. But the bottom line was that there was information that perhaps could have averted some of the damage or some of the things that happened.
Of course, the Americans introduced the U.S.A. PATRIOT Act. George Bush introduced it on October 26 of 2001, just a short time after 9/11. Has that changed? Part of what comes out in the Patriot Act is the fact that data that is stored on servers that may be in the United States or that they have access to are open to their ability to investigate and look at. It is not protected. It is not private.
In British Columbia, we decided, on our own, that we were going to protect our information by insisting that data was stored here. As a matter of fact, the minister may know an address called 4000 Seymour Place, right down here in downtown Victoria, where there is a huge server farm underneath a building where a lot of this data has been stored for decades. Of course, with the increasing volumes, etc., there was new data storage built in about 2010 up in Kamloops, and subsequently, there are other data server farms that are also in Canada that are storing data.
One of the things that we’re now looking at…. I know, as a former critic, that there were intermittent amounts of data that were being stored or transmitted through different networks. I think that the protection of data is, I mean, paramount in this whole discussion — and making certain that it is not accessed.
About ten years ago I had the opportunity to have dinner and host the former head of NSA, General Michael Hayden. He was NSA director from March of ’99 until April of 2005. He subsequently was appointed second director at the CIA, somebody who’s very knowledgable about what took place in September of 2001.
He told us, at a dinner with the people that were there in government that were responsible for that: “One of the things that the U.S. has looked at with the PATRIOT Act is the bottom line that…. What we are looking at is we want to protect you, and if you want our protection, we have to have access to all that data, and that means anything that’s transmitted through the United States.” He told people that, and some people were shocked about that.
When you do ask yourself about the fact that…. If you want the protection that you’re expecting, you want to make certain that other groups, terrorists or whatever, are not accessing that information. There’s a whole spectrum of other information. The NSA is looking at this information, and we know that it goes on here. As a matter of fact, there has been a certain inquiry that’s been going on dealing with illegal transfer of funds, etc. That type of information we do want to have access to.
Anyways, what’s more important is the fact that British Columbia was seen to be a leader in terms of protecting privacy by the rules, etc., that we established and — not only that — the fact that we insisted that we store the data both in British Columbia and in Canada.
Secondly, we’re at a turning point now where, as the member for Langley East pointed out, there are certain things that are happening that we need to address — efficiency, technology. I couldn’t agree more. I think that one of the things that’s happened is that big data has come at a cost because of the fact that we’re now having to have greater amounts of storage and what is easier is to farm that out, sell it or put it somewhere else on a server that we have no control over.
I don’t know if that opportunity was looked at by the minister or the government. But the fact is that some of the things…. These server farms are located around the world, in some of the places that we would not want our data stored on. A place where we could be doing a lot of this is right here British Columbia, away from earthquakes — reliable safe energy, in terms of electricity. The fact is that it’s not a threat. We’re not a likely site to be a target, like some of the other cities in other countries where data is stored. I think that that’s important. I think we’ve failed to look at the opportunities.
I do think that we need to be investing. Now, who would be a likely candidate to invest, in terms of efficiency and data management, etc., and technology? The government is not an early adopter. I found that out as the minister of this ministry. It was very slow and hesitant to adopt.
As a matter of fact, there was a case management system used at MCFD that, believe it or not, in 2010, was green-screen technology. It was maybe MS-DOS. The bottom line was the people that relied on being able to have access to this. There was a hesitancy by people in government: “No, it’s a very stable system.” And I’m thinking: “Well, stable, but it’s not very…. It doesn’t share information. It doesn’t work.” We had to shut it down to issue cheques for three or four days a month.
Realistically, there is an investment that government has to make, and it’s got to become more savvy. I appreciate the member for Langley East, who brought up this point, in the sense that we do need to do that. I know — from some work that we’re doing mutually on a committee — that she’s one of these progressive types of people. She needs to be listened to. On the other hand, data residency is extremely important when it comes to the protection of that data.
Most of the members on the opposite side…. There are a few that have been there for a few terms that would know this. If we were to put the shoe on the other foot, the criticism that there may be some people that, they say, now are abusing the system…. Well, I’m not convinced that they forget what they did when they were in government.
As the minister, I used to visit this regularly and go over to the FOI office, etc., and see the types of requests. I know that generally, they’re looking for information, the same as the opposition is here. They’re looking for information: “We want transparency, and we want to make certain that government is being accountable or held accountable.”
Now, there is a difference. I know that there is open access for other individuals. I don’t assume…. There are individuals sometimes that do abuse that, in the sense of the repetitiveness of a request or the broad nature of a request. I do think that that needs to be reined in, and I don’t think it should all necessarily be for free. This organization had at least hundreds of people working in it, but I know our record on delivery of records. We had about a 95 percent on-time delivery. I know that has been slipping over the years. There are all sorts of reasons or claims, and there are ways around it, etc.
I do think that one of the things that is distressing here is the fact that somebody that is extremely well respected around the world, the Privacy Commissioner…. His advice has either been ignored or not sought out. We have a committee that was previously sitting, and we have a new committee that has been working on updating this, etc., and we haven’t even waited for their results. We’ve jumped ahead: “We know better.” To me, that’s just not right. We should be listening to the Privacy Commissioner, working with him, to find a collaborative solution to how we make certain that we protect privacy and have accessibility.
Now, the member from Surrey mentioned that in her time as the minister, she was responsible for open government. I ended up taking that file, back in 2012-2013. I know that that was a big change, and — as she mentioned in her remarks — it wasn’t welcomed by everybody in government because of the fact that calendars were published on a proactive basis. There were records that were published. It did kind of…. You know, you hide behind that veil — if you want to call it that — of the fact that they have to request it or ask for it — that type of thing.
No. Everything that’s in your calendar is open, and you need to make certain that it is open and that it is actively published. She mentioned open government. We should be working to be more proactive. Instead of holding back on things, we need to make certain….
I encourage the minister, and I’m sure that she’ll be advised by her staff that this is important in terms of trying to make certain that we find efficiencies. Some of it is technology. Some of it is in proactive things that we should be publishing. I know that if we were in her role, there would probably be similar resistance to some things, but I do know that we need to make certain that we’re moving forward on this.
I think that there is a place in the act currently for frivolous and vexatious repeated requests. In the case of the branch that is responsible, Citizens’ Services, I think it’s really important that they use that tool for people that are clearly abusing a system that was set up so that it would protect privacy but, on the other hand, was accessible.
I know that I can speak knowingly about the fact that there are some abuses that we know. It was difficult to try to change habits or say that we’re not going to do that, because how would you have a transparent system if you say no and you pick and choose, etc.?
I know that there are times when carpet-bombing of…. “We want all the information. As a matter of fact, we want it not just from one ministry, but we want it from all 23 ministries.” But I do think that we’ve got to make certain that we modernize the act, and that’s why I go back to the committee. The committee is there to make certain that what we’re doing is we’re listening to the people that actually work with data all the time.
As a matter of fact, I know the privacy conference has been cancelled or postponed the last couple of years, but I know myself, I’ve attended it many times, and every time I go to it, I continue to be impressed by the knowledge of the staff that are working in the technology department in Citizens’ Services, about their ideas. I think that there is an investment that needs to be there.
Maybe some of the rules do need to be changed, but being that I haven’t been on that committee, I can’t comment about whether this bill reflects on the changes that were recommended by the former committee or what might have come from the current committee in terms of what needs to be done. It takes a long time to bring legislation forward. I do wonder what is driving the government to bring this in and do it in an arbitrary manner. I don’t think it would be completely arbitrary, but I think that the committee and the commissioner’s discussion comments have not necessarily been adhered to.
Let’s just talk about an example of where transparency is needed. In March of 2020, we came back to this Legislature. Some of the members came here for a very special session, an emergency funding bill which was completely a blank cheque. It had some notional kind of, “This is where we think we’re going to need the money,” or whatever, and we agreed, and we supported that. But the problem with that…. We did it again in June, and we subsequently did another one before the House rose in August.
The situation is that we were supportive to make certain the government had the emergency funds to be able to do things, but the fact that it took not only a long time, the fact that there was very little transparency…. As a matter of fact, we’re still waiting for information about programs that were announced that weren’t fully subscribed or were very slow in being subscribed. I think that’s the type of stuff the public expects, where $8 billion has been written out and said to government: “Okay, spend it. Do what you have to do to make certain we get through this crisis.”
I know the critic, I’m sure, of Jobs and the economy and innovation is still waiting for the outcome of some of the investments that were supposed to be made in businesses. I think it’s been very slow in coming out. Either there is a hesitancy in terms of…. Why not just tell us what happened? Government and, as an elected official…. We don’t get everything right all the time, but the situation is: let’s try and improve the process by putting that information out there.
By not providing it, what we end up with is this degree of secrecy, that there’s something wrong or that the money is going to a different place. That’s the whole reason that we ask questions about this. We ask questions about: was the money spent where it was expected to be allocated?
We know that there’s been a huge increase in health costs, in the people that do the tracking of where things are going. I think that it’s really important that the government expectation shouldn’t be any less than the fact that what we’re trying to do is make certain that we have the access to make certain that there is integrity with the fact that we’re spending taxpayers’ funds. Just because you’re government doesn’t mean that you get to not have to account for everything.
I think the fact that there is a change in fees, the fact…. I know from commentary that we’ve heard in this House that the opposition is part of the problem, they say. I’m thinking, well, let’s work together to make it so that we get the information. We heard earlier today about health requests to Fraser Health where 57 of 79 pages, I think it was, were completely redacted. Is that a system that’s really working? I don’t believe it is. I think we need to expect better from government in terms of the information.
Probably when it comes to the changes, there have been some very quick remarks by the media about this. I think that we do want to make certain the media does have the ability to get information. It’s been very difficult in a competitive world where some of the media don’t have the resources that they once did. I think access to information is extremely important to them. I know the fact is that when I look up in the gallery here, there are so many less reporters because the media is under this constant barrage of attack from social media, whether it’s all the different sources, or whatever.
The bottom line is not to say that it’s well researched, but the whole idea is that we do want to make certain that the media can do their research and get access to information, as does the opposition. I think that’s important.
I did mention about storing data outside of the country. I just think about the recent events. Well, look at the election in the U.S. a few years ago and Cambridge Analytica’s part in it. The bottom line is that data can be manipulated, managed and used inappropriately, etc. I do want to make certain that we don’t allow that to move into British Columbia in a way that it can be utilized in a way that’s unfair to the voters, the people that are electing. They want transparency.
I think that’s what the media…. We want to make certain that their access is not unimpeded, but we want to make certain that there’s a reasonableness to their access.
I know that there are going to be lots of questions on this particular bill, in terms of the different clauses. It’s a comprehensive bill. It’s going to take some time to go through that bill. We’re going to need time to make certain that we have an understanding of a lot of the provisions and clauses that have been put in there.
I can’t help but think about the fact that when we did make those changes that the former minister made when she became the minister and the name was changed to Citizens’ Services and Open Government, I know that there was a lot of criticism from the government side, or from today’s government when they were in the opposition ranks, about the fact that they didn’t believe that that was going to happen. I know firsthand that that did happen.
I do think that there’s a degree of secrecy that is showing up in terms of some of the questions that we’ve had in question period about the fact that we want transparency. We want to make certain that there’s access to this information and that it is not something that is glossed over in terms of the fact that there’s no need for that information or it’s redacted, etc. We do need to make certain that we have an act that’s working for both sides of the House, the public.
We need to make certain that its intentions are driven by the fact that we’re trying to improve a system that’s there to protect people, as well as to make certain that the people that are needing access to that can get access.
Mr. Speaker, I will take my place. Thank you very much for allowing me to comment on Bill 22.
[S. Chandra Herbert in the chair.]
M. Morris: My experience with the Freedom of Information and Privacy Act over the years…. Oftentimes, I have witnessed a misunderstanding of the legislation itself and how people guard information that really isn’t necessary. They protect the information, thinking that they are not allowed to disclose it without…. They don’t have a fulsome understanding of the legislation.
Oftentimes what I have witnessed is people erring on the side of caution by not releasing information, rather than releasing it. I think, reading through this bill and listening to some of the discussion, from the government side, particularly, I think government and I think a lot of the members probably forget what the purpose of FOIPPA is. So I just want to, probably, go over a little bit of the legislation itself.
“The purposes of the act are to make public bodies more accountable to the public and protect personal privacy by giving the public a right of access to records.” It’s not an unfettered right, and the act does have a number of provisions in there to ensure that that’s not the case, but the purpose of the act is to give the public a right of access to the records. The public.
“Giving individuals a right of access to, and a right to request correction of, personal information about themselves,” which is pretty standard. “Specifying limited exceptions to the rights of access. Preventing the unauthorized collection, use, or disclosure of use of personal information by public bodies, and providing for an independent review of decisions made under this act.” So an independent review.
Here we have…. I think my colleague who spoke before me mentioned it as well. All the members of this House got together collectively and passed a large sum of money for government to spend in support of COVID, looking forward to what the needs were of the public and to ensure the safety and health of the public of British Columbia. The Legislature wasn’t sitting, didn’t sit during that period of time.
There has really been no accountability as to where a lot of these funds were spent, up until this particular time. It only stands to reason that members of this side, of the opposition, are making inquiries as to how these funds were spent and the product of where this money was spent.
I’ve noticed, with interest, in situations that occur in my riding and throughout the province, the number of non-disclosure agreements that seem to be in force amongst public bodies, various ministerial offices throughout the province and the number of consultants that are signing non-disclosure agreements dealing with issues that affect the day-to-day operations of public bodies. That information needs to be made public as well.
I see this, also, as another obstacle, where we see government pretending to be transparent, pretending to be cooperative and collaborative with members of this House. But at the same time, they’re putting up more roadblocks to make it more difficult for the members of the opposition to obtain information and members in the media to obtain information that they need to hold this government to account publicly as well. This is just another continuum of the obstacles that are being put in place to make it more difficult for us, for the media and for members of the public to gain access to the information that they truly need.
Again, the previous speaker was talking about the current all-party legislative committee that was constituted in June to make recommendations. They still haven’t made those recommendations yet. So this government has pre-empted the advice that this committee was supposed to provide. And, of course, the Privacy Commissioner being opposed to these new fees as well.
I can understand fees in some situations. Back in my previous role as a senior manager in the RCMP, we were bombarded with requests for information under this particular statute and other statutes. We had to comply within a very confined timeline in providing that information. We had to be careful, of course, because a lot of the information pertained to ongoing criminal investigations and other police activities. We had to make sure that we didn’t disclose information that would jeopardize confidential information; would jeopardize undercover operators, agents; or, worse, would jeopardize prosecution of a case that we have already spent millions and millions of dollars on and a lot of time on, over time, over a period of years, to bring a case to court.
There are requirements. But when we get into the civil side and the public bodies, the public agencies that are providing a service to the public, oftentimes I’ve seen them where they will not disclose any information because it may reflect a bad decision that was made by somebody within an agency or somebody within government, and they don’t want it to reflect badly on that particular agency. That decision could have had or would have or did have repercussions over a period of time.
Under the Freedom of Information Act, public interest is paramount. It says so under Division 4. It said: “Information must be disclosed if in the public interest.” Under section 25.1(a), it says that it must be released if it’s “about a risk of significant harm to the environment or to the health or safety of the public or a group of people.” Now, I’ve highlighted this because this is what COVID has been all about. This is a worldwide pandemic. The risk to public health has been significant, not only in British Columbia but around the world.
The people of British Columbia, of all sectors across the province here, need to know the extent of the pandemic within their particular regional area. They need to know the criteria used in determining whether or not government made the right decision in implementing a lot of the rules that they have — restricting access to bars, restricting access to restaurants, restricting access to religious services. Without access to that information, it becomes a very subjective process where somebody within government may have access to all kinds of statistical information that leads them in that direction, but it’s not released to the public.
Oftentimes some of those decisions can be very subjective in nature and more detrimental to businesses and more detrimental to the people who are actually on the ground experiencing what some of those impacts are. So government is throwing up another roadblock — that if you want to access that information, you’re going to have to pay a fee, and then you’re going to have to pay, of course, additional moneys depending on how much paperwork and how much work is involved in producing the information that that individual wants.
A lot of this stuff is available at your fingertips. The public agencies that are collecting this information and making those decisions — that information is available at their fingertips. There’s a section in the act. I don’t have it in front of me here, but I think it’s right at the beginning of the act. “Duty to assist applicants. The head of a public body must make every reasonable effort to assist applicants and to respond without delay to each applicant openly, accurately and completely.”
You know, I remember this from the days when I worked in public service. Our databases were complete. They were up to date for the most part. And subject to ensuring that we weren’t going to jeopardize an investigation or release personal information about a person, that information was readily available, and we were able to respond right away.
I hear more and more cases where media, where other agencies have applied for information under FOIPPA to this government, and it takes months to get that information back — months. And as we’ve seen recently, the majority of that information is redacted. It’s blanked-out pages, page after page after page. So I think some of these agencies are creating more work by taking this stance.
You know what? I go back to situations in my own riding. I saw a notable change — of course, we weren’t in government any longer — with several public ministries, offices located throughout my riding, where they could no longer speak directly to me as the elected representative for that area — that we had to go through the ministerial office. My staff would be requesting certain information from these ministerial offices, and we were told to access it through the Freedom of Information and Privacy Act rather than give us the information right up front.
I view that as more obstructionist than anything else. There was no real purpose for that. It delayed getting the information to us by maybe two months, three months, four months, whatever the case is down the road. But it was just a…. I don’t know whether it was a provincewide decree by government that offices were supposed to keep information from MLAs on this side of the House as we were trying go about doing our business within our ridings to support the public that elected us in those ridings and provide them with the information that they needed to make decisions in the day-to-day course of their own particular duties.
Going through the bill, looking at it, listening to some of the discussions on this, I see this as another roadblock. There’s no real purpose for it. Pending the results of the committee that’s been struck to review this legislation…. Let the committee do its work. Let them go out and hear back from the public as to what some of the concerns are out there, hear from some of these agencies what some of the roadblocks and impediments are within this legislation and then offer some advice and direction to government on how to correct that.
Particularly when it comes to the privacy commission, the commissioner’s office, what are their concerns? They have some concerns over this particular bill that government has ignored and is just blundering ahead to try and put this through. Why? What does government have out there that they don’t want the public to be made aware of?
I’ve heard the saying the tides come in…. This government has been in place now for a year, but it was in place before that for a time, spending billions of dollars under COVID. The tide is starting to go out as we go through this term in office, and as the tide goes out, it’s going to reveal a bunch of stuff sitting on the floor. We want to know some of the decisions that were made that are going to cause this debris field that we’re going to see on the floor as this tide goes out.
Hopefully that’s not what this bill is designed for — to try and cover that up. But I think that government needs to become more transparent and more open than it has been. The people of British Columbia deserve that in every respect, particularly after the tough times that everybody has been through with COVID right across the province here.
I look forward to further discussion on this bill from other members. We’ll see what the committee stage brings us.
C. Oakes: It truly is a privilege to stand in this Legislature to talk about an incredibly important bill, and I want to thank the minister for the work on bringing it forward. Accountability and transparency is always critically important for any government. I think that the discussion today is very relevant.
I have heard some of the members previous in government who have talked about track records on transparency and accountability. I recognize some of the members are new. I thought this would provide me an opportunity to provide context of, often as an MLA working in our ridings, what type of use freedom of information may look like in our communities.
I’m going to take this House back, as I’ve talked many times in this House about the devastating impact that the wildfires have had in so many parts of the province of British Columbia. Particularly, I would like to spend a few minutes talking about the challenges following the 2017 wildfires, particularly the Plateau fire in the Cariboo, and the consequences on people, on our biodiversity and, in fact, as I have talked in this House before, the long-range issues that communities like mine have.
I want to raise this, because on August 11, 2017, it was an absolutely devastating day for the folks in the Cariboo and for so many people. The consequences of that particular day has led to impacts that people are still living with today in 2021. That was a day where we had a firestorm, and we had an amalgamation of multiple fires that became the Plateau complex. Through that, some decisions were made. Many of my citizens that live in my riding had individual structural protection units on their homes.
We are a hearty bunch in the Cariboo, and we like to make sure that when we are able that we absolutely take care to do the responsible thing to make sure that if we are living in these areas that we have things such as structural protection units available on our properties.
On that particular day when the fire blew up and it ravaged, burnt homes, burnt properties, had significant impact on livestock, significant impact on people who’ve invested absolutely everything into their homes and their lifestyle…. For many of them, it’s many generations that had been passed on.
Some of the challenges that emerged out of that particular day are that some of the structural protection units — the private structural protection units — were moved from private homes and shipped down to the Okanagan where fires were also happening in that particular area.
What does that particular issue that I described as an MLA, which I continue to fight for my constituents on…? The only ability that we had as a community, as an MLA, as an office trying to resolve and get support for constituents to resolve liability issues, to resolve things such as insurance and so many layers was to really utilize the freedom of information.
I can tell you that in many instances that we are still waiting for certain reports. We’re still waiting for certain very critically important pieces of information to thread what happened on August 11, 2017, and the weeks leading up to that and the years following that process.
It tells a story about how critically important it is for constituents to be able to access very important financial support. Often, it relies on the very documents that the government has.
The reason why when we start talking about the layering of fees, whether it’s a $25 fee…. What I don’t think the members, to date, understand is that, in my experience, the number of FOI requests that have to be submitted in order to get information is enormous. If you do not have the exact language, if you do not have the exact word…. Was it the Plateau fire or the Plateau fire complex? Was it the Castle Rock fire or was it the Narcosli fire? There are so many dynamics on that particular date that we were asking questions for. Was it the complex fire? Or was it some name, because there was amalgamation of fires that happened?
I raise this because…. Look, I believe that there is good intent here. I believe that, as we are talking about this bill, there are, obviously, valid reasons for it. What I think is critically important for us in this House is to understand the unintended consequences and how it actually works on the ground as we try to support constituents, as the media try to get information to support people that are living in our communities go through….
So fast forward a year after 2017 — the wildfires. We knew that reports were coming out around hydrology reports. We knew that reports were being formed, because we would hear about a report that was happening.
For example, I have talked in this House about the West Fraser Road. Now, we knew a report was going to be coming forward in March of 2018. We had evidence from people who were on the ground that we were going to have significant challenges with many of our roads because of the soil erosion, the impact of the wildfires and the hydrology reports. We fought really hard to try and get that information so that we would understand what those next steps looked like. So I put in a freedom-of-information request about West Fraser Road and some of the reports that had happened — lo and behold, no reports found.
Again, it was a back-and-forth process. Well, was it the West Fraser Road? Was it the Garner Road? Was it the Webster Lake Road? Was it a connecting road? Was it a company that was actually doing the report — that you actually had to FOI the company who did the report — or how government had termed what that particular road was going to look like? You would often be having to put in multiple freedom-of-information requests just to even try and find any information.
Again, going to why that mattered, it was critically important because in April of 2018, we had a catastrophic weather event which led to us having a significant impact on West Fraser Road. They still live with a detour. I am appreciative of the government — that they have finally got the approval through the disaster financial assistance program, federally, in order to invest. It’s over $100 million on that critical piece of infrastructure.
Why it was important when I was raising the concerns that I had been hearing in March of that year was because people had advised us that there were challenges within the watershed. It was flooding out in Nazko. It was flooding out in the Narcosli. All of those watersheds were starting to get backed up because of the wildfires of 2017, and the rehabilitation hadn’t taken place yet.
We had tried to raise it in the House. I tried to raise it with the minister. We tried to do freedom of information. We tried all of these steps — all of the tools available to us as elected representatives, all of the tools. The media repeatedly tried to find the information. We all worked collaboratively together to try and get the right answers, because when these types of issues happen in our communities, the next thing that happens is that we have to go and mount an incredible defence of why we deserve to be prioritized in very important budgeting processes.
In this particular case, we had to make the argument. We needed information that would come through freedom of information, because we just weren’t getting anywhere with getting the reports that were needed to go to the federal government to say, under the disaster financial assistance programs: “These were the steps that were taken, and this is why we are eligible for the investment in the infrastructure to make sure that these projects are moving forward.”
Again, it’s a challenging process. And I know that members of this House who perhaps have been here longer than I certainly can go through many stories of the challenges of people as individuals — about the information that we try and seek to support our constituents or that the media or other organizations try to get. And layering additional costs on an already complicated, bureaucratic, red-tape nightmare is not a solution.
I think the Privacy Commissioner has come forward and said, “Look, we’re taking a step backward,” and that we should absolutely be looking at ways of making information-sharing proactive. It’s in the best interest of our constituency. It’s in the best interest of citizens across British Columbia.
I also wanted to talk about some of the other times that we’ve had to turn to freedom of information to gather critically important data, again, to help our constituents. Following 2017 and 2018…. When we talk about transparency and accountability and how the government works with MLAs on all sides of the House, how that works to support constituents…. Look, as MLAs, we know that whoever walks in the door, we help them. That’s our role as an MLA, and I know that every member of this House is proud of those accomplishments to be able to try and move those processes forward.
Following 2017…. I heard the member for Langley East talk about how this is a government that’s so open to transparency and accountability and all of the steps that were taken. I can tell you that there was a significant shift that happened, because as MLAs — I have talked about this in this House before — there were roadblocks put in place that we were no longer to go to our local, say, Forests, Lands, Natural Resource officer to talk about files that were impacting our constituents.
I can raise the alarm bells for this House, having experienced catastrophic wildfires in 2017-2018, then following up with floods in 2018-2019, and then having the landslides that we now are faced with. When I think of the impact of this last year on communities such as Lytton and Paxton Valley and right across the Okanagan, and you see anywhere where there are fires, there are going to be significant impacts in the years that follow.
We need to make sure that there is transparency and accountability to help those constituents navigate a very, very complicated system. Whether it’s trying to get permits for…. Perhaps they need a new fencing permit. Perhaps they need a new grazing licence. Perhaps they need new tenure because of areas that have been burnt. Perhaps it is about trying to get insurance. Perhaps it’s about all of those pieces and the ability for MLAs to have access to critical information.
That is going to make it hard for British Columbians to get the types of supports and services that they desperately deserve. For people that have built this province, for people that have invested so much — in so many cases, multigenerations — to not only build but to pay taxes…. These are folks that are not asking much of government, but when something happens, when there is an emergency, they would hope that government would have their back.
If the only way that we can get information is to go through the freedom-of-information process — and I’ve outlined my experience of having to put in so many multiple requests to get one single report — I think it identifies the challenge of: “Oh, it’s only $25.” Well, is it $25 and it takes 40 attempts to try and get information on one particular report? What does that look like? For the media who are trying to get information to help support their communities, I think it’s very troubling.
I think the other issue that I’d like to raise in the context of this particular bill that is before the House is the fact that I’m incredibly proud and honoured to serve as the critic for Advanced Education, Skills Training and Sport. I take that role to heart. I’m passionate about the ability to try and make sure that everyone — students, faculty, staff — feels supported in this. I know for sure that our success as we lead out of this pandemic, and we all hope that that happens soon…. That level of expertise — our researchers, our innovators, our entrepreneurs — is going to be so critical to that process of success for all British Columbians.
When we talk about transparency and we talk about accountability…. I have some experience in this Legislature. I’ve sat on both sides of this House. I have a pretty fair understanding of how processes work and how we move things forward in this Legislature. When the estimates process came up in 2020….
For us, again, estimates is such a critical time, especially for critics of various portfolios, to be able to ask very important, relevant questions that have been brought forward to us by stakeholders in those areas, to bring forward these requests on behalf of our stakeholders, to help move the file forward.
I think sometimes people look at this House, and they think that the work we’re doing is…. You say yes; you say no. It’s always this combative process. I can tell you that more times than not… I think at least the approach I’ve always taken in my role as a critic is: how can we make it better? How can we bring forward the information that we’re hearing from stakeholders to make sure that government works better for all British Columbians? While we may disagree on how that looks and what that process means, I think every member of this House legitimately wants to make sure we have the best for all of the citizens of British Columbia.
Imagine my surprise to find out through this process in 2020 — or 2021, sorry; these years just seem to have stretched unbearably long as we have tried to process through Zoom and do the best that we can, as well, through a hybrid session — that critically important Advanced Education post-secondary questions got condensed down to, I think, three hours. Three hours to talk about the investments that we make into ensuring that we’ve got the best for students, that we’ve got the supports that we need, that we’re training for the jobs that we know are available through labour market information that the government does have available. I appreciate that those reports are available.
Imagine my surprise when the only other option I had as a critic because of the condensed time frame was to make an agreement with the government to say: “Look, I will provide my questions.”
Interjections.
Deputy Speaker: Members, could we have some order in the chamber, please. The member for Cariboo North has the floor. Thank you.
C. Oakes: Imagine the frustration of not just the work that I’m trying to accomplish to make things better and to contribute and to bring stakeholders’ concerns forward to this House and to this legislative body. Imagine my surprise when there was an agreement. “Provide your questions in writing.” It was on Hansard.
Again, I followed up. I said: “Okay, here are my questions. They’re very important and relevant questions.” That was in May of 2021. I still wait. I still wait for those answers from those questions. Again, to the staff of the Ministry of Advanced Education, we have some outstanding issues. We’ve got some outstanding questions that stakeholders continue to wait to hear from you on — critically important, such as: where are we at on the scope of the funding review?
That was supposed to be released. That was information that…. Certainly, I can tell you that the post-secondary sector is trying to understand what the new funding review will look like. What is the scope of it? What is the direction of that?
Deputy Speaker: Sorry, Member. Is this relating to Bill 22?
C. Oakes: Absolutely. It’s about accountability and transparency and the steps that we have to take. So if I can’t get this information, Mr. Speaker, the only option left to us and our stakeholders is to say: “Look, we’ve going to have to utilize freedom of information.”
I don’t want to do that. I would like to believe that, in good faith, when we bring things forward to this House…. Maybe it was just that things get busy. But it’s an opportunity for me to raise it in this House, just because I think it is important. I hope I don’t have to put in multiple freedom-of-information requests to find out where we are at on the funding scope. I hope that information will come, because I know stakeholders, faculty, people in administration are trying to understand that.
The other critically important file that came forward, and I’ve continued to raise it in this House, is about the concern that we have on campuses right now around sexualized violence and what that looks like. We’ve seen such a significant rise. The pandemic has certainly made it very difficult for so many people.
It’s important that a report was supposed to come out at the end of December of last year that talked about what that next step looks like and then that investment. The Minister of Sport is here, but the previous minister…. I want to thank the minister for the investment that, when she was the minister, was made, because I think it was critically important that ending sexualized violence on campus was a priority that I know that the minister worked hard on. I want to thank the minister for that work.
The complication becomes when there are changes in ministers and priorities change. Now we find that that there was no money for this particular program in this budget year. Why this is relevant to the accountability and transparency bill is the fact that, again, there was a report that was supposed to come out in December that would walk us through what the next steps were. There are 11 recommendations that various student associations across British Columbia put forward. We’re meeting next week with the Alliance of B.C. Students, who have put some thoughtful work and effort into what needs to happen on campuses to make sure that they’re safe for everybody.
Again, I’m hoping that I don’t have to go through freedom of information. I hope that, again, by raising it today in this House, those reports and that information will come forward and that we’ll be able to share that information next week with the students who are coming to advocate to all members of this House. I think it’s critically important that that investment happens and that work continues. Incredible work has been done through multiple different governments and different ministers. I hope that we don’t have to utilize this tool of freedom of information to access that information.
On Monday, I was really proud, as I know probably members were on both sides, to speak to a motion about the women tearing down barriers and taking significant pride in that. It has been a celebration of accomplishment of women. We’ve had the ability to share those stories. I think that’s critically important to do in this House. I also had the opportunity to talk about what is happening with universities and colleges and where that gender pay gap is.
I had raised this previously, as we’re going through discussions with the government, and somebody….
Deputy Speaker: Sorry, Member. I’ve allowed very wide leeway for your remarks. I really would urge you to keep your remarks to Bill 22 and the clauses that are in it. Thank you, Member.
C. Oakes: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I do appreciate the latitude that you have provided, and if you’ll allow me just to thread the needle a little bit again.
It’s about important information that comes forward. I always appreciate the fact that stakeholders come to us in good faith, and they ask us to raise these things of government. Some of the times it’s because they don’t want to have to go through freedom of information. The fear that we’re hearing, whether it’s the Alliance of B.C. Students or other organizations, is: are they going to now have to have a fee placed on freedom-of-information requests?
I’ve already walked us through the fact that, through transparency and accountability, we’re just not getting that information that, perhaps, I think the stakeholders and the organizations I certainly meet with on a regular basis are looking for.
I think people just don’t want to have that concern to what this bill is talking about, particularly about adding a fee, making it more complicated for stakeholder groups across this province or MLAs to be able to get important information. Again, in the context of all of our goals in this Legislature, it’s to make government work better for the people of British Columbia. I think it is important to make sure that in the context of listening to our table officers….
The fact that the Privacy Commissioner has come forward and said, “Look, this is a step back when you start putting a fee onto accessing very important information that I think citizens of British Columbia have the right to get access to….” It does not contribute to that resolve of I think all members of this House to make a government work better for British Columbians. It just doesn’t. It’s going to take us back. I worry about what those consequences — and unintended consequences….
Again, I think, in fairness to the legislative team that built and put this bill forward that we are discussing today, it is our job as opposition to look at what unintended consequences of any bill could be. I’ve stood in this House before and talked about…. I spent a few years talking to hundreds and hundreds of people across British Columbia about: how does government actually work for citizens?
That initiative was reducing red tape, and I know that it’s been…. There’s always back and forth between members of this House about: “Well, what did that really mean?” But it was really, truly, about a reflection of having important conversations with British Columbians on how easy it is, really, to access and work to get information that the citizens of British Columbia really rely on.
Again, we shouldn’t make things more difficult. I think the work that I know the ministry did on trying to reduce tape…. And I know that this government, the NDP government, has made…. They continue to have that commitment of net-zero regulation increase. I applaud the government for that. I think it’s an important initiative. The reason why I think it is important is because I think, while governments change, we have outstanding public servants that work and have long-serving careers in the public sector.
I can certainly share with this House that the challenges of this particular bill, when I look at the context of it…. Is this going to make it easier for British Columbians to have access to the government? Is it going to make it easier for British Columbians to get information that they need? Whether it’s the media or an MLA who is trying to get an important report so that we can access disaster financial assistance for our region, for a road, or whether it’s us trying to work collaboratively across multiple ministries, multiple agencies, to get insurance for somebody that’s been burnt out, getting access to reports is critically important.
Maybe my experience might be the anomaly in this Legislature. Maybe the process that I’ve had as an MLA working to try and to access freedom of information and what that looks like and the fears that I have when I read this particular bill, what the unintended consequences may be…. Again, I’m just raising this because I want this to be the best government for British Columbians. I look at this particular bill, and there are certainly good points of the bill. I’m certainly not arguing against the entirety of this bill. I don’t want to….
I think having the ability to be transparent and to provide that opportunity is critically important. But again, please understand how freedom of information works often on behalf of your constituents. If there is an issue that arises…. We saw the devastating impact this year of wildfires, and I had significant challenges with spring freshet.
What I can say, in closing remarks, is that we have to prepare for the incredible changes that are happening in our communities. We have to fight for our constituents, and we have to fight to make sure that we’re making things easier for British Columbians to access their government and to access government information.
Again, I ask the government to reconsider some of the sections of this bill. I think it’s going to be troublesome, and I think it’s going to have significant impacts and unintended consequences that, I worry, will not make British Columbia better in government.
S. Chant: Thank you for the opportunity to speak to Bill 22, amending the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, affectionately known as FOIPPA.
As a registered nurse in the community over the past 20 years, I have dealt with the current version of FOIPPA in a whole variety of ways — personal requests from clients, families or family members, asking for extracts from charts; if I’m looking at reviewing serious incidents in the community, submitting requests to other agencies for information to help us see these incidents in terms of frequency and morbidity; and also in a whole variety of other circumstances.
Oftentimes I, as a clinician, need to get support in understanding and interpreting the information that my team has received. I’ve also been available to clients and their families to help them interpret the information they have been sent, because quite often, what comes from a FOI is quite different than what you had thought you had asked for. Having had all these experiences, I understand both the positive and negative impacts that information and the interpretation of information can have on individuals and communities.
I’ve also been involved as an adult guardianship coordinator in situations where the confidentiality and privacy of seniors are being breached because someone else wants to make decisions about the elder’s care, finances, housing, placement in a facility, or a myriad of other things — decisions that may or may not represent what the elder would want, exclusive of what might be considered for the best.
As a parent, I have heard from other parents whose kids — and I’m doing air quotes here — now over the age of where they are considered adults, have been in distress while away from the home, maybe in residence at a college or university. Because the kid does not reach out to the parents, no one else does either, to protect the confidentiality of that adult that’s involved. Sometimes this has had fatal consequences.
All of these situations — and many, many more — are terribly challenging on moral, ethical and philosophical grounds. Many of them involve the use of information to work through. However, information is a double-edged sword and must be gathered, stored and accessed in a way that serves the people of British Columbia effectively and safely.
The other side of this equation is that information sources are now almost infinite in number, or so it seems. Access to information — be it correct, appropriate or nefarious — appears to have become much easier, in many ways. Apparently, my phone number is on many databases of entities that want to tell me many things, sometimes in languages I don’t understand. Somehow Facebook seems to always have ads for things that catch my attention. I wonder why that is. Although this information flow is not new, it is significantly expanded, and the variety of mediums has grown immeasurably.
FOIPPA legislation was implemented a while ago, pre–Zoom, Teams, TikTok and Amazon. The list goes on and on. Even ten years ago, when FOIPPA was last updated, many platforms were new. Information collection processes were very different, and the rights of many had not yet been recognized or acknowledged. Subsequently, it is critical that the FOIPPA legislation be updated to reflect our current state, which is what our government is committed to doing.
Through consultation with those who use FOIPPA to either protect or gather information throughout the diverse populations that make up B.C. — some of whom have never had a strong voice, if any, in the past — these amendments will allow B.C. to stay abreast of the ever-evolving wave of technology, ensure that privacy protections are strong and improve services to those who request information for appropriate reasons.
How many of us have used some type of data tool in our public service work and found it to be clunky or challenging or only useful for part of what we’re trying to do? When we look around, we find that there are other reputable tools out there that perhaps we could consider using but are not allowed to do so because they’re not available to us. The FOIPPA amendments will update provisions so that we can use some of these modern tools yet continue to maintain a high standard of privacy and confidentiality.
Through these amendments, breaches of privacy directions will be updated. Breaches of privacy are incredibly important to recognize and deal with. In the field of health care, we have breaches, and they must be dealt with. That was a particularly important point to me.
These breaches will be updated to ensure that there’s mandatory reporting, that it doesn’t just get dealt with on a one-to-one basis. More effective consequences and a broader outline of offences to ensure that those in positions of trust are clear in the understanding of their roles and responsibilities and are accountable to those roles and responsibilities.
Non-personal FOI requests, which expend a significant amount of time, energy and money — ongoing, to generate responses — will have an application fee attached, something which is associated with a whole variety of services currently and is long overdue in being implemented.
Of course, in keeping with our government’s commitment to DRIPA, the amendments will support the increase of information-sharing with our Indigenous partners, inclusive of cultural protections and finally removing the non-inclusive language. This will help our government remain accountable to the public, provide people with a way to access records held by our public bodies and protect their privacy by establishing how this information is collected, used and disclosed.
There are so many public bodies that this act covers now. You can’t imagine trying to name them, count them, say them — 2,900, apparently. These are Crown corporations, municipalities, universities, colleges, health authorities and many others. These amendments have not been updated since 2011. They had a bit of a tweaking in 2019. However, that was pre-COVID.
COVID has given us a really big window into what we do with information, how we would distribute information, how information is requested, the importance of information to people and the importance of the right information going to the right people for the right reasons. So we’ve learned a lot through COVID, and this allows us to implement some of that learning in updating these amendments.
Additionally, since 2017, we have consulted. This government has consulted with many, many stakeholders in order to try and make sure that all of the voices that represent the diversity that is British Columbia are included in these amendments and all the applications of these amendments are spoken to. As well, the Privacy Commissioner has been very much involved in this, and the privacy commission.
If we can be confident that information is well gathered, well stored, well protected and accessed appropriately, we’ve gone a long way with our FOIPPA amendments. They bring us in line with the rest of Canada, and they allow us to manage people’s information safely while also making people able to use those tools that are out there now that weren’t there ten years ago, to get the services that they need.
I understand, speaking to what my colleague was saying beforehand, that people want access to information. I understand that. I’ve been on the face of that. I understand that information is very important to all of us to make decisions about how we work our lives.
I also understand that information needs to be kept in the place that it’s appropriate for the people that need it and want it and that it needs to be accessible and that we need to figure out ways to make it accessible when the requests are appropriate.
This set of amendments is allowing us to show the people of British Columbia that we are committed to diversity, inclusion, reconciliation and equity through increasing information-sharing with our Indigenous partners, adding the Indigenous protections and making sure that the non-inclusive language is replaced.
If we achieve all these things through these amendments and more, we will have achieved a lot, because the FOIPPA that we have right now, while it was started in a time when it was really needed, was started in a time where the information flow and the information highway was a lot different than it is now.
These amendments — I’m very pleased to stand in front of this group of people to say that I support them, and I feel that it is definitely the time that they were done.
K. Kirkpatrick: I rise today to speak to Bill 22, the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Amendment Act. This is important legislation. It needs updating. There are so many good components to it.
We live in a time where — I guess all times have been, but now more than ever — data-driven decision-making…. It’s so important for us to be able to access information so that we can make decisions, we can make them quickly and we can make informed decisions. But this bill, as it is, appears to go against that and against the nature of a democratic society, where people should have easy and open access to information on what government is doing.
This government attempts to paint itself, or themselves, as transparent, but as we heard in question period this morning and as has been asked many times of this government, that does not seem to be the case, and this stands in complete opposition to transparency.
There is a current all-party legislative committee, which has been put together with the purpose of actually looking at FOIPPA and making recommendations. They have not even had a chance to meet and to prioritize the work that they’re doing.
So we have to ask: why is this bill coming forward at this time? Why is there a rush to bring this to the House prior to that work being done? Is there still a purpose or a reason for that committee? What will that committee be doing once these amendments to the act have already been made?
The government’s already begun to strip away transparency and accountability. We’ve seen it in some of the legislation that’s been brought forward so far this year. We’ll talk about the role of the Information and Privacy Commissioner. They are appointed to protect the information and privacy rights of British Columbians. They are the place to look in terms of best practices.
[N. Letnick in the chair.]
This government is dismissing and undermining that role of the Privacy Commissioner. The Privacy Commissioner is opposed to imposing new fees, which we find is part of this new legislation, and other elements of the bill. This government has ignored his concerns, and he has called this bill “a step in the wrong direction.” That’s the Privacy Commissioner.
It looks like the Premier has a total disregard for the independent Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner, because earlier this year, we saw him ignore the commissioner when it came to making the decision about a half-billion-dollar investment in the InBC investment fund and the government deciding not to make that transparent under FOI legislation.
So the Privacy Commissioner: “My understanding is that InBC will manage some $500 million of public funds for the purpose of investing in B.C.-based businesses…. Because InBC will be making decisions about the allocation of significant public moneys and discharging important public functions, it should be subject to transparency and accountability under FIPPA.”
This goes, again, back to listening to the Privacy Commissioner, understanding what true transparency is and the obligation that this government has to being transparent with British Columbians. But government chose not to make these changes and not to make the management of a half-billion-dollars of British Columbians’ money transparent.
Now we’ve learned that when it comes to something as basic and as fundamental as our freedom-of-information system, the Premier blatantly ignores the recommendations given. It already takes far too long to respond to FOI requests. British Columbians, media, members of the opposition are currently waiting months. Sometimes they’re waiting years for documents requested through FOI.
Information requested through FOI is often timely. It is required to make other decisions. By the time we finally get information, it can be stale-dated. There can be something else going on that has actually changed the validity or purpose of the information that we’ve already asked for.
An example that I’ve got is a submission that we made to MCFD for a report that government had received on the work that had been done on the pilot sites with the $10-a-day daycare. We had requested…. We knew government had commissioned this. We knew government had received this information. In my role as critic, it was important that I understood what that information was. We made the request. We then had…. The response was a request for more time.
Then, without notifying us, without getting back to us, I just happened to find that government had uploaded the information onto a public website, which is great, and we wanted that information to be public, but the process felt, again, like there was some hesitancy in providing that information to us in a timely way and being open about it.
Government has to be able to provide information quickly. With the substantial increase in public sector employment, government should, I would presume, have a greater capacity to be able to respond to those freedom-of-information requests.
Let’s not forget about the supply bill from last spring. With no accountability on how the money was going to be spent, it was: “Trust us, and we’ll give you the details later.” Employment standards amendment, child care bill — substantial pieces of information are being put into regulation so that they don’t have to come to this House, so that they don’t have to be debated and so that they don’t see the light on them when these decisions are being made.
It just goes to a theme of putting up obstacles to British Columbians, to the opposition, to the media, for their ability to see what is happening with government and what decisions are being made.
Over the last 20 months, we’ve seen government keep vital information from the public with respect to COVID data — again, as we heard this morning in question period. This is a time when British Columbians are nervous. They need to know what’s going on. They have a greater need for transparency and access to information, but at that time, government is introducing a bill here, which will, inevitably, put up increased barriers for people to be able to access that information.
When we talk about government not providing openness in information, you can add schools to the top of the list for that. Information with respect to COVID should be readily available, openly available, and it shouldn’t take parents setting up their own Facebook pages and websites and Twitter accounts to be sharing information the government should be sharing.
The Premier started the school year by hiding details on outbreaks in schools from parents, because he didn’t want to stress them out. Well, when we try and decide what is happening or figure out what is happening and we don’t have information, it’s only natural that we become stressed out, we become anxious and, in the absence of information, we invent and determine and decide what the reality is, which should not be as stressful for parents as they may, perhaps, be thinking.
The Premier continues to dismiss questions that the opposition is asking about why that critical COVID-19 data is being withheld. The Premier says he’s not hiding anything, but we continue to question that claim.
I’ll give you an example from last month. Government admitted that it was keeping two sets of numbers on how many COVID patients are in the hospital. There is one for the public — that they release to the public — and then there is the real number that they keep in-house and don’t share that. The real number that was not released is 46 percent higher than the number that was made public, and that’s a pretty significant difference.
If we look at the Massey Tunnel — an extremely important project, one that has been a long time coming, one that there were plans and processes in place for already — the government quashed a plan for a ten-lane bridge to replace the Massey bridge. Instead, we’re getting an eight-lane tunnel. Where is the information to justify this? We haven’t seen government be able to provide real, detailed data on why this is the best decision, why they are doing it and why that is better than what had been previously proposed.
The bill doesn’t prevent destruction of documents. This is a concern. This is destruction of documents prior to FOI requests being filed. This was something the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner noted, that this was a significant gap in the legislation. This was something a few years ago that had been flagged, but it doesn’t seem to be addressed in the legislation that’s being put in front of us.
The Privacy Commissioner says: “If somebody destroys records because they think they might be of interest but wants to destroy them before any request is made, there is no offence for that. That can’t be right, and that needs to change. It’s an offence in Alberta, and it could have easily been put in place here.”
The application fee has set Twitter in a frenzy. It is a big concern for people in terms of blocking access or making access unavailable because of the cost of it. This means anybody who is going to be filing a freedom-of-information request, if it’s for a non-personal reason, is going to have to pay a fee for that. The minister has said that this is a nominal fee — that this is just meant to recoup costs associated with filing these requests.
We still have to pay. We get a quote on how much it’s going to cost to produce the documents, so why do we need to have this additional fee in order for someone to read the document to determine how much is going to be required to provide that information to us? Saying that this is not going to be an impediment is disingenuous. It is going to be an impediment. It impedes the public’s ability to have access to information that they should have access to.
The example which I believe one of my colleagues has used…. Let’s just say it’s $5 per request. Sometimes you have to ask for that same piece of information from multiple ministries. Sometimes you don’t know that even until you get the first request responded to. So if you’ve got to do that across a number of different ministries, it can really add up.
What we’re hearing…. The consensus is that this government is going to be asking for $25. Well, that’s 400 percent more than the fees in Ontario.
Now, I understand that FOIs can be annoying. They can be time-consuming. They can be embarrassing. They can just be something that is a bit of an annoyance. I’ve been on the other side of this with FOI requests coming in, having to pull the information and deal with them. And yes, I would have liked to have less of them, but they’re a democratic right. They’re very, very important, and it’s the government’s obligation to be able to provide that information to people.
I’ve got a couple of quotes here with respect to fees. One government member of this House once described fees as “a tollgate on citizens’ right to access.” That was a quote from the member for Oak Bay–Gordon Head in parliament in 2017. Another quote, and this is from the member for Nanaimo–North Cowichan while in opposition: “We’ve seen fees put up as obstacles. We’ve seen exemptions expanded and stretched beyond their original meaning.” That was this government when in opposition.
I have another quote here from the Premier — which we can repeat a few times — in 2015, when he was in opposition and said: “I think all British Columbians should be concerned when their government hides things from them. The whole point of having access to information is so we can all make reasonable judgments about the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of our political leadership.”
Now, I think that’s a great quote, and I completely agree with what he said. This is part of the issue. It is a citizen’s right, and it’s our right in opposition to be able to get information in a timely manner without consistent extensions being requested and without having to pay fees for this information that government should be readily able and willing to provide to us.
So those are my key concerns. We need to focus on changes that are going to allow reasonable access to information. We know that information and the way information is shared and provided and stored has changed significantly in the last little while or in the last ten years. But really, data-driven decision-making doesn’t mean a six-month or a one-year wait for information, and it doesn’t mean that people should be having to pay fees in order to access that information.
This government needs to start to put the light of day on decision-making in terms of the legislation they’re bringing forward and putting things into regulation and sharing that information. So this just seems to be a theme with this government.
I agree with the need to update and change FOIPPA, but I disagree with some of the amendments that are being put forward and believe that they’re not in the best interests of British Columbians.
Deputy Speaker: Thank you to all members for turning off their phones.
A. Mercier: I’m pleased to stand up and talk to Bill 22, which is a reasonable series of amendments to help improve access to information and strengthen FOIPPA in this province. I’m also very pleased to see that the opposition is having somewhat of a road-to-Damascus type of moment about transparency and the importance of transparency in government.
We heard the member for Abbotsford South, at the beginning of this debate, read out a series of quotes from different folks and folks in the media and folks in the local Fraser Valley media. But what he didn’t give was the context, and the context is a fundamentally broken relationship that the B.C. Liberal party has created between the government and the public of British Columbia and, frankly, their broken relationship with the truth.
Now, I want to go a bit over the record, because this debate has been a lot of back and forth about going over the record. But I’d like to talk about this, so….
Interjections.
Deputy Speaker: Members. I would like to hear….
A. Mercier: We’ve got, and it’s a little rich….
Deputy Speaker: Members. Member.
A. Mercier: The members can heckle, Mr. Speaker. But it’s a little rich….
Deputy Speaker: Member.
A. Mercier: Oh, sorry.
Deputy Speaker: Thank you.
A. Mercier: You have a striking resemblance in sound to the member for Peace River South.
Deputy Speaker: I’ll take that as a compliment.
Members, if I could hear the member who has the floor speaking, I would appreciate it. Thank you.
Go ahead.
A. Mercier: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
You look at the context here, and the former government, the B.C. Liberal government, the last time they were in office, set up an entire apparatus based on private emails to hide what they were doing from freedom of information in terms of government business. Quick wins. Right? That’s not something…. That fundamentally changes the relationship of government to the public and people’s perception of the government.
I mean, we’ve heard from the member from West Van–Capilano about InBC and whether or not InBC ought to be subject to FOI. For good commercial reasons, those investments have layers of protection but ultimate accountability, through a board and a series of processes, to the government and, through reports, to this House. But what we didn’t hear about was the deal that the Liberals did with Little Mountain and the Little Mountain land the last time they were in government.
The fact is that it’s rich to be lectured about transparency from members of a former cabinet that ripped pages out of the reports on ICBC, hiding a $1 billion loss from the people of British Columbia and putting that corporation into dire financial straits. And I should say that right now our government is executing and has executed one of, probably, the greatest corporate turnarounds in North American history, putting ICBC on sound financial footing.
Now, we’ve also, you know…. Their relationship with transparency was so casual that when he was triple-deleting emails, the member from Kamloops said: “Oh, I’ve triple-deleted my emails from time to time. Some emails are deleted; some are just kept. We destroy some records; we don’t others.” So you know, I can understand how they’re concerned about the destruction of documents, given that they’ve destroyed so many in their time in government. But the fact is that British Columbians can take heart from the fact that they have a government right now that cares about transparency, that cares about freedom of information. That’s seen in this act.
I’ll say…. I’m just canvassing the debate that’s occurred here, but there has also been talk about the supply bill that happened at the beginning of the pandemic. Well, the fact is that you can stand in this House and rail against authorization for spending that you don’t think should have happened or ought to have happened, but this House unanimously authorized that spending, so I’m really not sure where that comes from in terms of a criticism.
We’ve also heard a bit about the George Massey Tunnel in this debate and about business plans. This government has been amazingly proactive in terms of releasing public documents. That was canvassed by my friend earlier, the member for Langley East, so I’m not going to go back and belabour that point. But I’ll just say that we’ve released a business plan for the George Massey crossing. There was no business plan released for the Port Mann.
There may be some complaints about redactions, but the fact is that this is about sensitive commercial bidding that is about to occur. You don’t go and tell the person that you’re about to buy a house from how much you’ve been approved for on the maximum for a mortgage. You don’t tell them where your wiggle room is, because you’re not going to get a good deal. This is about getting a good deal for the people of British Columbia, not giving handouts to donors.
I’m not going to belabour this as well. We’ve also heard about health data and some attempts to muddy the waters in terms of the government’s handling of the COVID pandemic, which has been exemplary. It’s an evolving situation.
There are all kinds…. I can say this as well, as a member of the bar, having been involved with cases that have to do with privacy data around health and privacy rules around health. There are a plethora of very good reasons to have very strong protections around personal health information, and that sometimes makes things difficult. We have done, and the Minister of Health has done, an exemplary job at being data-forward and open and transparent with everything that we’ve done during this pandemic.
That’s a simple fact. It’s a matter of record, and it’s going to become a matter of historical record, looking back. I have no hesitation to say that.
Having responded, I think adequately, to the comments from the members opposite about this bill, I just want to speak briefly now to the bill, Bill 22, and what it seeks to do and the impact it’s going to have. We are updating FOIPPA’s data residency provision so public bodies can use modern tools while continuing to protect personal information.
That’s what my friend for Langley East was talking about, in terms of school board meetings and making sure that we’re in the 21st century and in the modern world, in terms of giving public bodies the tools that they need to meet the uncertainty of our current times — also, frankly, to meet the new reality of work and of public hearings and everything else.
We are enhancing public sector privacy protections. We are enhancing them and increasing accountability by implementing mandatory privacy breach reporting — mandatory privacy breach reporting — introducing a modest application fee for a non-personal freedom-of-information request — non-personal. So your information that the government has on you is not impacted by that. This is a nominal fee.
I just want to say the members of the opposition don’t seem to have a problem with fees when it’s the government reaching into the pockets of British Columbians. When it’s raising ICBC fees or MSP, there doesn’t seem to be an issue. This is a small, modest and nominal fee and nothing like the increases that we saw under the former Liberal government in MSP and ICBC.
This is a really positive bill, in many ways. You’ve even heard Jill Tipping, the president and CEO of the B.C. Tech Association, say: “This is a positive development from government that B.C.’s tech industry welcomes. The changes to B.C.’s data residency requirements will allow local companies to leverage cutting-edge technology to help B.C.’s public sector deliver the modern tools that citizens expect with the privacy protections they need.”
Now, it’s all fine and good, I guess, politically and for the sake of having something fun to tweet in your time off to focus on one, narrow administrative aspect of this bill. But the fact of the matter is this bill brings B.C. into the 21st century in terms of freedom-of-information and privacy protections.
I’m proud to speak this bill. I’m proud to vote for this bill. I can understand when you’ve broken the relationship so badly, you’ve damaged your reputation on an issue so much…. I can understand over-swinging in the other direction to try to compensate for it. But sometimes that just takes you right off the road, and that’s what happening with the opposition here. They’ve completely missed the mark in an attempt to try to convince the public that they care about transparency. The record and their actions show otherwise.
Deputy Speaker: Peace River North. [Applause.]
D. Davies: Thank you. My one fan. Okay. There are a couple more that came out of the woodwork.
I appreciate the opportunity to speak about the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Amendment Act, Bill 22. Just following behind the member for Langley and his point about how it’s rich for us to be lecturing them on transparency…. Let’s be honest here. It’s time for government, now, to accept responsibility that they are, first and foremost, government now.
This isn’t just us lecturing them. If any of them has had the opportunity, from the moment that this bill was announced to today, to go on to any of those social media platforms, there are thousands of people rallying against this poor piece of legislation that’s been brought forward before us.
It’s time, now, for government to start making good decisions, because they are government. In fact, they are the previous government, as we did have an election here not so long ago. But I won’t belabour that point.
This bill is being brought forward at a time when we’ve already seen distrust in many of our institutions across the province. Government is one of those institutions that is right now under scrutiny by many people across the province. There is a trust issue.
When we see pieces of legislation like this that go to the core of that trust, that attack that trust, that don’t quite pass the smell test, that is an issue for British Columbians. We’re hearing loud and clear that it’s an issue for British Columbians, and I will actually raise some of these points here a little bit later around some of the things that we’ve heard just in the last few hours on social media.
I was first elected to public office 16 years ago, to city council in 2005 in Fort St. John. Over that time, I’ve had the opportunity to talk to I don’t know how many thousands of people. We made decisions when I was on city council. Decisions have been made here. The importance of people to have the ability to access government — whether it was local government or, in this case, provincial government — is absolutely critical to our democracy, a critical piece of our democracy.
A little while ago the member for Langley East, I think it was, told a little story about being a school board trustee and how it was just so much work when people did FOI requests. “Man, this is too much.” I’m sorry, but this is not the way to get around that. That is the cost of democracy — to have people have this ability to access government, to access documents. So I don’t buy that argument one bit.
Interjection.
D. Davies: Exactly. Well, you’d be hard-pressed, actually, if you were to go on social media right now to find anybody in favour of this piece of legislation that’s been brought here.
There are a lot of issues with this bill, and my colleagues have done a marvelous job at bringing some of them forward. I’m not going to repeat them all. But British Columbians now, more than ever, are looking for greater access to and greater transparency by government — more information. This bill strips that away. We’ve heard numerous times…. The minister earlier stated that she did not believe that the fee — and I’m going to talk about this in a minute — was a barrier. Well, it is a barrier, and it will be a barrier.
I guess we can see some motivation for this bill. We’re 3½ years away from an election. Maybe it’ll all be forgotten, swept under the carpet, won’t be an issue, taking advantage of a majority to not really be held accountable for passing this piece of legislation. Even their own privacy commission, this government’s privacy commission — this province’s Privacy Commissioner, maybe, is what I should be saying — was absolutely opposed to fees being charged.
It’s really interesting. All of the colleagues this in this House received an invitation, actually, today — this was on all of our desks — to come and meet the statutory officers, including the Information and Privacy Commissioner. “Members are encouraged to take advantage of this opportunity to meet the officers and senior officials to learn about the work and the responsibilities that these statutory officers undertake on behalf of this Legislature.” The responsibility that they take.
When we see one of these statutory officers, one of these important parts of our democracy, come forward and say this isn’t a good idea, government should be listening to that. But they’re not. He calls this “a step in the wrong direction,” this bill.
It’s quite confusing when we see government ignoring one of our statutory officers’ strong recommendations — not just a passing comment. “Yeah, this might not be good.” No. This is a step in the wrong direction. “Whatever. We know better.” Which brings us to debating this piece of legislation today.
There are lots of things that I’ll talk about here over the next few minutes. One of the things that is interesting is about where some of this information is being talked about being held — outside of British Columbia, outside of our jurisdiction — which really intrigued me a little bit. I remember when I first got elected in 2017 to this place. I used to use Google Calendar on my phone. I got in trouble, because we’re not allowed to use Google Calendar. We’re not allowed to use Google Calendar as members of this place because that information is held in a different jurisdiction, not applicable to British Columbia laws.
Now we see the government pivoting to this new direction of possibly storing information outside of British Columbia’s jurisdiction — the United States or just outside of British Columbia. Again, another concerning piece of this bill is: where is this information going to be held? What could go wrong? We’ve never seen issues before with data breaches, have we? Well yes, we have. We hear about it all the time. When we’re dealing with British Columbians’ personal data, that raises a flag that is very concerning to myself, as a member of this Legislature, as well as to British Columbians in general.
I talked a moment ago about the application fee of an FOI request. I think the range was anywhere from $5 to $50. The minister had said that this isn’t going to be a barrier. I’m sorry, but whenever you make something as a cost, that’s a barrier. When we talk about news sources, whatever the media source is…. I think we can be honest here that media is not a rich industry. It’s an industry that is already struggling to make the bills. Yet they play a critical role of holding all of us to account in British Columbia. So to say that…. This $25 or $50 or $10, whatever it is, will indeed be an impact.
I could have been a designated speaker and just read tweets for two hours and probably would have. Actually, maybe I should have done that. Maybe one of my colleagues will do that in a little bit. But I did select a couple that really stood out to me. I’m going to quote them. They’re from Twitter.
Jon Woodward from CTV tweeted out a little while ago: “I can’t count the number of times we interviewed outraged then-opposition,” government now, “NDP MLAs over some scandal about the governing Liberals at the time, and we had discovered that via freedom of information — that we got this information. Now that they’re in government, they’re putting a tremendous bottleneck in the system that now keeps them accountable.”
Jon goes on to say in another tweet: “How much is $25? Here’s some perspective. First of all, it’s five times the Ontario fee.” We do hear: “Oh, other jurisdictions do this.” I’ll tell you, if I know our government well, they’re going to go to the higher end of that $5 to $50. I will almost guarantee it. I don’t think we’re too far off on this.
Jon goes on to say: “If this fee was in place in 2020, I would have had to spend $1,525 just on application fees. Multiply that over all the journalists in British Columbia, and you can see the chilling effect.” That’s a lot of money. That’s a lot of money for one journalist to do their job in holding government and all of us to account. That’s democracy.
He goes on a little further. Actually, he had a number of really good tweets. Again, I probably could have printed them all off. He then starts listing off a number of stories that he’s covered just in the last little while. All of these stories have come from freedom-of-information requests. I only looked at a couple of them. He listed off a number.
“More than $100,000 in living expenses paid to an ousted B.C. health care executive.” He wrote that story here just a few months back and got that information from a freedom-of-information request. He makes the connection: would this story have ever have been brought forward without a freedom-of-information request? Unlikely. It would not have been brought forward.
“Five patients a day waiting 40 or more minutes for ambulance” — from documents received from a freedom-of-information request. “Dozens dead, hundreds infected, but health authorities fight to conceal B.C.’s hospital outbreak findings.” Those are just a few of the stories. He made reference to many of these stories in his tweet, and I encourage members to go look at those. But this is important work that journalists do. It’s also a critical piece of what we do in opposition, for our job to hold government to account.
I did print off a couple more. I will read them out. This one’s from Rob Shaw. “So in trying to detangle where this idea came from, it would appear that health authorities, during COVID-19, in which they are under fire for not releasing enough information” — which we heard about earlier on today; I think it was during question period — “have convinced the minister that putting new fees on FOI will help improve transparency.” Listen to that. Like, listen to that. Does that even make sense? “We’re going to start charging because that will improve transparency.”
Rob Shaw goes on. He talks about the commissioner slamming the government on this legislation, which I’ve already talked about, so I’m not going to repeat that. He also refers to a Penny Daflos story, which I think has really been a big story here in this past week, around the COVID numbers and the transparency issues that we’ve seen just recently.
Is charging a fee for these agencies to do their job a barrier? You bet it is. I think that government should be listening to the Privacy Commissioner and taking the advice around looking at some changes to this bill, including, of course, where the data is being stored.
We’ve heard a couple members talk about how it’s kind of going to be up to interpretation for government to come up with their own ideas, and a lot of this bill is left up to regulation, which is always of concern, especially when you’re talking about individuals’ personal information.
In fact, if there are times where you want something in legislation, firmly, it probably is around this legislation, the FOI legislation — not to be left up to regulation, not to be left up to a small select group to sit around and make their decisions based on the flavour of the day or whatever theme was happening around that table. It needs to be put in legislation.
I’m jumping all over. I’m reading ahead and going back.
You know, some of my colleagues…. This is kind of the comedic part of this. We’ve done this before in this House. Thank goodness we don’t have to do an FOI request to search Hansard, because there is an incredible amount of opposition around what this legislation intends to do. That opposition comes from the government MLAs and ministers.
I know my colleagues have already referenced a number of…. It was a really easy document to print off, to find quotes of government members, over the past number of years, absolutely vocally pushing back against any talk of there being fees charged for FOI requests or changes to be made to the FOI, taking great honour in B.C.’s FOI system.
We’ve heard the minister of Indigenous affairs and his opposition to charging a fee for FOI requests when he was a federal Member of Parliament.
We’ve got quotes from the Premier himself, many quotes, adamantly opposed to what this legislation is doing that they have now brought forward. Again, one of our members could probably fill up their 30 minutes just reading the quotes from government MLAs and now sitting ministers. I look forward to one of my colleagues doing…. Oh good, it is coming. That’ll be good TV to watch here shortly.
It is really interesting that when government now seems to be under fire, if you will, they don’t want the access to that information to be as readily available as it should be. Let’s be honest around the transparency of this government. Again, I don’t want to belabour this point, but we’ve seen many transparency issues from this government over…. Well, since 2017. Let’s be honest.
I just think of a couple of issues around my own area up in northeastern B.C. around transparency. Doesn’t matter if we’re talking the caribou issue, when we talked about the backroom deals that have been happening, the secretive meetings that have been happening. Access to back country, the snowmobile association — lots of complaints around not knowing, not being told what government is doing about these issues.
Even MLA access. A lot of us MLAs have issues around accessing government employees up in our own regions. In fact, we had to bring that forward in this House to actually get some action just not so long ago.
These are transparency issues by this government, issues that make it hard for us as MLAs in the opposition to do our job, and that’s to represent our constituents, to do our job as critics in our different portfolios. That’s also an important piece of media and journalists and what they do, having that ability to access information with ease, not waiting months and months and months to receive 55 blacked-out pages to do a story on something that is absolutely critical and important to British Columbians that they want to know.
So yes, we have a transparency problem with this government. British Columbians have a transparency issue with this government. That’s in all corners of this province. People are not trusting government. They’re not trusting these institutions that they should have a level of trust in. That level of trust is being whittled away by pieces of legislation such as this change to the FOI Act.
Just going down that memory lane of transparency, I talked a bit about the issues that are up in my region. Peace River South, I know, has dealt with the same issues around transparency and some of the meetings that have happened up there.
We’ve heard about the COVID numbers, the challenges. In fact, I talked about Penny Daflos and her story — that she’s trying to get the information that British Columbians so want but can’t get the information. That’s right now, under the present FOI. It will even get harder under this new bill.
We’ve heard issues. My colleague from Fraser-Nicola, I think it is — I’m going to get in trouble now; she’s going to give me trouble — has mentioned a number of times around the transparency within our schools and COVID numbers. Interestingly enough, I had a conversation with some school officials up north, and they’re worried about the transparency around our own health authority.
I went and looked on Northern Health Authority’s website, and the school outbreaks, if you compare them to that of the Interior Health Authority — and, granted, there are more people in the Interior — it’s not even comparable. I encourage other members to look at the reporting that the different health authorities are doing. It raises alarm bells. It raises questions. Parents are going to those websites, and they don’t trust it. They don’t trust it because the government has become hard to trust in recent years.
I know we talked about the Massey Tunnel. We talked about the Massey Tunnel today. Earlier on, my colleague recently talked about the Massey Tunnel, the transparency around it. Nobody even knows what’s happening with the Massey Tunnel, in reality. Timelines have all been changed. Numbers are not readily available. I can only imagine that if numbers are ever received, they’ll probably receive big, blacked-out pages as well, because that just seems what this non-transparent government does.
Again, I’m just going back to, I think, the one person that this government should be listening to, and that is the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner. I’ll go back to that because I think it is critical that this is the person that we all have entrusted with the information and privacy within British Columbia and how that’s dealt with. When that office is completely opposed with the direction that this government is going, I think that raises an alarm bell.
I think, as people start reading the news and watching the news this evening — and I’m sure that this will be a topic of discussion — and they start hearing, what message is that again sending out to British Columbians around trust in this government? Well, I can tell you that the message being sent is going to be loud and clear. It’s that you can’t trust this government, because the government seems to be trying to hide and make it hard for these critical groups — like us, like journalists — to get the information out to the British Columbians who deserve it, and this legislation actually goes against that.
There is a lot of stuff to talk about. I see my time is wrapping up, and I know that I have people kicking down the doors to try and get in here and talk about the issues around this piece of legislation. Anybody that’s out and has accidentally stumbled across the Hansard channel on their cable TV today and are wondering what they’re watching — I encourage you to read the news, look at some of the issues around this legislation, immediately contact your MLAs and tell them that you’re not happy with how this government is not being transparent and the challenges around that.
With that, Mr. Speaker, I will take my place. Again, it’s always a pleasure to speak on behalf of my constituents and folks in my riding that I know. I’ve already had discussions with people in my riding that are already concerned about this.
I said I was going to wrap up. I’ve got two more minutes. I’m going to take them.
I had this discussion, and I talk about…. I mentioned some journalists today, and Rob Shaw is probably going to laugh at this. I consider them pretty big media, right? You know, CTV folks. We have media in our small communities in Peace River South as well. These are community media — the Alaska Highway News, The Mirror — that are really struggling to keep the doors open.
Let’s be honest. This is not going to do all of our small communities in here — our local media, who are now going to have to be paying to get these stories — any favours. When we start seeing small media shut down, that’s a sad day. That’s a sad day for democracy. That’s a sad day for our communities. It’s a sad day for all of us when we start seeing that.
Anyway, with that — I’m not going to take my full two minutes; I’ve got another minute left — I will say thanks very much for entertaining me. I will take my seat, Mr. Speaker.
Deputy Speaker: You had me whipsawed there, Member, on the yes-or-no part.
Hon. N. Cullen: I thank my friend from the north for his comments, for not taking his full time and for psyching us out a number of times.
It’s a pleasure to join the conversation today about what I think we can all agree is an incredibly important topic — about how information is shared or not shared with the British Columbia public. As somebody who also represents a northern riding, in Stikine, I am also thinking about the issues that we face up north — where, from time to time, citizens, citizen activist groups and local media seek to find out what is happening within government and will use this particular act in order to pull that information from government if it’s not proactively disclosed.
I think that’s an important point to raise: that we should look over the trend line of our government — being now in power some four years — to see if that trend has improved in and of itself. Are more parts of the British Columbia government automatically disclosing information to the public? Where that is appropriate, that seems, to me, the most favourable situation, so that someone doesn’t have to file a request, doesn’t have to go and dig through mountains and mountains of documents. You can see that under our NDP government, we’ve increased the number of authorities. We’ve increased the number of institutions.
Well, my friends across the way are certainly entitled to their opinions but not to their own facts. If the number of institutions are increasing — which they are, according to the commissioner and others — that are automatically disclosing their reports and automatically disclosing information, that isn’t appropriate, because we all know that there are limitations for disclosure and that there’s also an expectation and a tension between privacy and disclosure.
When British Columbians give us their information, or when it is gathered from them, either through census or health records or the various ways that British Columbians have their information kept by the government — that personal information I’m talking about — there is also a need to protect that privacy. People are entitled to that privacy, and we promise that to them. Government is not always successful in that endeavour, and unfortunately, we know there will most likely be breaches that happen from time to time. We’ve seen them in the past — student loan information, health records, incredibly important and sensitive data, from both the public and the private sphere.
I don’t think this is one of those cases where we can say that one sphere of our lives does it inherently better — the private sector or the public. Both struggle, because we are just collecting so much more information today than we did in generations past. There are so many more nefarious actors on the stage that are willing to go and attack the security systems that we have in place, both in the private and the public sector, to try to grab that information, be it for profit or exploitation or whatnot.
This bill, Bill 22, B.C.’s Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, seeks to bring British Columbia forward in many important ways because, as members in the opposition and those on the government side have indicated, we’ve lagged a bit behind in terms of other jurisdictions within Canada, and in the way that we administer this act and the requests that come forward.
Now, I spent more than a fair share of my time in opposition. We would, from time to time, use freedom-of-information to try to get out information from government. It was sometimes successful. It was oftentimes thwarted by heavily redacted or government just taking so long that, by the time the information came forward, it was no longer useful. The issue had moved on.
We’ve also seen, as opposition members here have talked about today, the great effectiveness that the fifth estate, the media, are able to use freedom-of-information — the power to draw from government more information than was initially disclosed, to be able to talk to the public about the administration and how the government is doing.
I’m in full agreement with the opposition of the vital nature of freedom of information, particularly for the media — we’ll focus on there for a moment — in terms of their efforts do their job on behalf of the public, because they have an incredibly important role to play in the public discourse, in keeping government accountable and making sure that the extraordinary powers that government has in its hands are handled responsibly.
I don’t think we would have fully known the extent of the B.C. Rail fiasco that took place in the early 2000s under the government — which ended up, by the way, for those on the opposition side concerned about cost to taxpayers, costing taxpayers $500 million in the lost sale of B.C. Rail. It was $500 million. It went from $1.05 billion for the potential sale of that asset to just north of $500 million.
That was half a billion dollars that the Basi-Virk situation…. Some will remember on that side, if they are of a certain vintage, that the insider trading and dealings that were going on within the government at the time actually were exposed — and I’ll take a small tangent here, Speaker, but come back to FOI — because the RCMP were surveilling people connected to the government at the time not over the B.C. Rail issue but over a drug ring, a marijuana and cocaine trafficking ring, which then linked them back. They found in their wiretapping that there was information going on between insiders, right to the Premier’s office, about the potential sale of B.C. Rail, leaked information.
Then, only later in court was the FOI, the Freedom of Information Act, able to be used to drag forward the records and the documents that the government had buried to describe fully the extent of what I will call corruption — I don’t know what other word is usable, and I’m trying to be careful with parliamentary language — that was taking place.
The ICBC mishandling of FOI was also an incredibly important part of that. That ended up costing B.C. ratepayers more than a billion dollars in extra fees and, as many would argue, potentially cost lives in that ICBC was no longer helping people out in the ways that they should because government had been using it as an ATM. FOI and the ability to extract that information from government was critically important.
We’ve seen it recently with the Cullen commission — which is, of course, not a reference to myself but a much more esteemed person, Speaker. I think that’s parliamentary to refer. In that commission, the justice has been able to see information that we have been calling for from the previous government to be brought forward about what you’d have to say is one of the most nefarious things possible, which is the using of British Columbia as a money-laundering centre for the worst of the worst of the world’s crime organizations, from the Mexican and Columbian drug cartels, Chinese Triads and Middle Eastern gangs.
From 2009 on, government had been warned about these cartels bringing in bags of unmarked bills into B.C. casinos to launder the money, their ill-gotten gains. FOI and the ability to, then, drag out that information from government, previous government, was vital.
We took so many iterations of the NDP government, now calling upon the previous government to release those documents to that commission so we can get to the truth, so we can stop that. We can stop it from happening.
Deputy Speaker: Excuse me, Member. I was conferring with the Clerk just to make sure. Could we not reference the Cullen commission since it’s still undergoing.
Hon. N. Cullen: Thank you very much. I appreciate that, Speaker. I was only attempting to refer to media reports out today and some of the comments. I thank you and, through you, the Clerk, to wary off of directly inferring that commission.
[S. Chandra Herbert in the chair.]
There are more than enough examples of the incredibly important nature that FOI has played in exposing times when government has done badly, when government has acted in a way against the interests of citizens. I’ve named a few examples. I’m in complete agreement with colleagues across the way that those scandals that we saw time and time again…. Not always, but often a vital piece in the story was the ability of FOI to be there.
Now, I’ve listened to some of the speeches this afternoon that seem to describe it almost as though the Freedom of Information Act were going away, that somehow it wouldn’t be available to British Columbians. Let’s clear the record. This is modernizing the act in a couple of important ways.
British Columbians seeking their personal information will not face any of the fees whatsoever that we’ve talked about. Those seeking freedom of information of other issues that are not directly connected to their personal information will face a nominal fee. I was casting about the world and Canada. The Canadian government requires a nominal fee, as does, I believe, Australia and the U.K. and others. Jurisdictions within Canada also do.
I’ve noted that some of the reports on Twitter, which my Liberal friends are now using as sole-source information, are suggesting that places like Quebec don’t have a fee at all, and Ontario. There are sliding fees. There is an initial administration fee in many jurisdictions — $5, $10, $20, up to $25 — to suss out how extensive the request is. Are you asking for a single document? Are you asking for ten years’ worth of documents and tens of thousands of pages? What is it that you’re seeking?
I think a $25 fee — up to and around that range, or as little as $5 — seems worthwhile in the sense that we sometimes show the earnestness of requests connected to the fact of: will you put 5 bucks down? If someone is unwilling to pay $5, then are they sincere in their efforts?
Our government is absolutely concerned and consumed with issues of equity and questions of social justice. I think we’re in the $5-to-$25 range over something like this. We’re in what I would consider a reasonable range, and certainly reasonable with many other jurisdictions within Canada, the U.S. and around the world.
The Liberals have chosen today to obsess on the fees, and that’s fine. Sometimes they’re concerned about fees, other times less concerned about fees. They certainly were not concerned about fees when MSP premiums were cranking up for every British Columbian family, when they were expressing and exposing British Columbians to more and more tolls. Those fees weren’t important for people to get to work and school. Those fees weren’t important for people to get good health care. Those fees weren’t important when ICBC was overcharging drivers in this province extraordinary amounts of money, up to $1 billion in total.
Those fees didn’t concern the Liberals. Suddenly they’re concerned about the $5-to-$25 fee. Understand, consistency is not something that we’re necessarily looking for from this opposition. That’s okay. Let’s find the places where we do have agreement, because I think that’s important. It is vitally important, and the opposition plays this role, as does the press, as does civil society, in that tension of accountability within government.
Within the Canadian parliamentary system here in British Columbia and across the country, extraordinary powers are given over to the government, particularly majority governments, to appoint and assign and the public expenditure. We have the accountability every day here, through question period, for what it’s worth. Sometimes very worthwhile, sometimes less so. But there are other moments of accountability, and getting information, exposing information and questioning power, questioning the government, is unbelievably important.
Finding out what government is either unable to disclose…. Sometimes I have encountered that. You seek out information from government, and they just simply haven’t compiled it the way that you want as an individual or the way that our constituents would want in a meaningful and manageable way. Technology has, in fact, helped with that, in our ability to have databases work in such a way that you can compare. You can compare the spending in one constituency to another on health care or on ICBC rates and whatnot. That has been helpful. In days past, that was an extraordinary amount of work.
We also know that 2,900 public bodies are automatically exposed to FOI. There’s much more, an increase, in automatic disclosures, as there is also an increase in penalties to bodies subject to FOI that don’t disclose, in a timely manner, their freedom-of-information requests. That seems to me important.
Here’s another point, I think, of agreement. It’s around the issue of trust. The opposition in this case have a somewhat tenuous line to march and walk in the sense of: do people trust government over something as important as the handling of the pandemic? I would indicate that in some ways, the results of the last provincial election somewhat indicated that the public had a certain high level of trust with the way the government handled the pandemic.
If there is a tension that I would describe here, it’s when saying that people don’t trust the government on the release of information as to what’s going on with infection rates. What’s Dr. Henry saying about this? What is the prescription? What is the effectiveness of this? In describing a problem, sometimes — and I would caution the opposition on this — they can actually make the problem worse. If they are overloading on how much mistrust there is and how people distrust the system, “Maybe Dr. Henry isn’t being straight; maybe the minister isn’t being straight,” they can actually exacerbate some early feelings of mistrust into much, much larger and amplify that sense of mistrust.
This is not a suggestion in any way that we ever blindly trust any institution of power. But I would suggest that in the good faith and the good work of people like Dr. Henry and like the Health Minister throughout this, through the disclosures to the opposition, the briefings, the confidential briefings which…. I heard the minister today say the opposition, in good faith, has been consistent in keeping those briefings confidential.
That is a system of trust between two parties that don’t trust each other at all, generally speaking, because the issue is so important — the ability to have MLAs in opposition or government know, to the best of our ability, what is happening with COVID in their constituencies so that we can collectively join together in calling British Columbians forward to their responsibility and their obligations to keep each other safe, to get the vaccine, to follow the public health orders.
When asking questions about trust and accountability and transparency, all important and vital, there is a point at which we cross over into exacerbating and amplifying the mistrust, where people start to doubt the intentions of the public health office, doubt the intentions of the Minister of Health. I think that is a point where we start to do more damage than good in asking for accountability. I think that’s a reasonable tension to have and it’s a reasonable conversation to have.
The context in which these changes are being made, I think, is also important — not only the digitization of our world but also moving through this global pandemic. I, at no point, ever thought that this place could ever be done virtually. The institutions of parliament, of Legislatures, were just too fixed, like stiff marble, that we could ever change the way that we interacted with one another in an effective way. Then we found a way around.
I saw the resistance from the health care industry, the community, from doctors and nurses, to telehealth for many years. There were some that were just obstinate: “We are just not going to allow anything to happen online. People won’t trust it.” Yet we’ve seen an explosion, in fact, of the ability to have consultations and our records kept and recorded and kept in virtual context. Protecting that privacy remains incredibly important. This, I will admit, was a place that I had some consternations.
We’ve seen previous iterations of governments here in B.C. and at the federal level about the domesticity of keeping the data within our borders and subject to our laws. I think it’s worthwhile for members and members of the public, who the opposition are encouraging to become educated — as I have been slowly becoming educated, because I’m not naturally inclined towards understanding these types of technologies — as to what security is.
There are a number of conditions for security. One is where the data is physically kept. That can seem important, and intuitively, I understand that. I think another element is: what are the security protocols, and how much are we spending on keeping that data safe, regardless of where it’s kept? There isn’t anything inherent in saying that if data is kept within this building, it is therefore safe. It may be safe. It depends on what protections you put around that data. We’ve had our breaches in the past of data kept here in British Columbia because our security levels were just not to the same level as those seeking to breach that security.
Like I said earlier, that’s going to remain a challenge and a struggle, because there are so many interested parties, most of them nefarious. They’re attempting to constantly hack into government accounts, constantly hack into the private sector security of data, because data is information, and information is power. We know that. That’s going to require vigilance on all our parts in the way that we conduct our own lives. We’ve all seen the spam and the phishing trying to expose….
If I can take a moment, I think this is a public service announcement. I saw one of the more sophisticated spams and attacks on my own privacy that happened just six, seven months ago, when I was out in my community in Smithers in northern B.C., picking up a couple groceries.
I got a call on my phone, and it was from my credit card. It came up as my credit card company, and they said: “Have you made the following two or three purchases?” Someplace in the U.K. and someplace in Malaysia. This had happened a few years ago. Someone had somehow gotten my credit card info and made very expensive purchases. I said: “No, not at all.” They said: “Can you confirm who you are?” I said sure. They gave me my birthdate, and they had my phone number and they had all sorts of things. I said: “You know, could I just check to make sure that you’re actually my credit card company?” “Oh yes, absolutely, sir, we are.”
They had so much information on me, to the point where the hold music was exactly the same as the hold music that my credit card company uses. The diction was the same. The verbiage was the same. I said: “Hold on a second. I’m not sure.”
While I’m trying figure something out with these guys, I get another call from my credit card company saying: “Mr. Cullen, have you made these other purchases in other countries?”
What had happened is while I was on hold with this fraudster, they were now charging my credit card for other purchases. And my real credit card company had caught the fraud taking place in minutes, all happening at the same time. I thought that this is getting more and more sophisticated. I’m not naturally a suspicious person, but I’m not, you know, the dumbest person, and it took me 25 minutes to figure out that the fraud was taking place.
We’re living in a challenging environment, folks. It’s increasingly a global community of this — increasingly sophisticated attacks on our privacy and keeping the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act at pace, listening to the challenges to these amendments that come from the opposition, that come from civil society, that come from the media, as to what is not right about the amendments that we are making.
I think there’s always humility required in government when making amendments to important pieces of legislation, which this one is, and I hope that our government does that because, ultimately, this is a trust exercise. People are okay to mistrust government and, Lord knows, coming from Stikine, I have more than our fair share of constituents that just inherently mistrust government for various reasons — experience, ideology, whatever it happens to be. And that’s okay.
At the same time, we need to trust government to do the things together that we can’t do alone — provide policing, provide health care, education for our kids — and do it in a way that we deem to be acceptable and ethical. That’s why we have all those officers of parliament that do such good jobs, including the Information and Privacy Commissioner.
In the context of this pandemic of which so much in our lives has changed, this, too, is requiring change. This is an important point, and I want to be careful in this because it can be misinterpreted the wrong way.
I’ll speak more to the federal experience, which was more extensive for me, where we had a number of FOI requesters who were very excitable. They would present hundreds and sometimes thousands of FOI requests to government. They weren’t a member of the media. They were citizen activists, I suppose, but they would go after one particular ministry and do thousands and thousands of requests over time.
Just so people can understand — to my understanding, each ministry has people responsible for this. When an FOI request comes in, there’s staff time that they’ll move over and say, “Okay, we have these requests,” and try to assemble the information. It takes time, depending on the request. What government in Ottawa used to call frequent fliers — folks that would come in for these thousands upon thousands without anything really specific in mind. They are simply phishing.
This is an extreme case. These are extreme cases. This is not typical. Most FOI requesters have a sincere intent in mind, are looking for specific either personal information or to understand what government is doing. Yet these folks do exist.
I wouldn’t suggest that the fees are necessary for the exceptions, but sometimes exceptions do exist in which people will abuse the powers granted. Again, it’s an exception, and it’s not a rule. But it’s a challenge, and it’s a challenge for those that are placing those sincere requests into that same ministry that has now been stacked up with legally obligated 1,000, 500, 100 different requests that they’re dealing with. It’s very difficult to deal with the more sincere ones at the same time that they get backlogged.
Some will say: “Ah, that’s an excuse.” But I’ve watched the reality within some ministries where you have a staff person dealing with those 200 requests for information, some of which are each hundreds of pages long, and then someone comes in and says: “I want my records on this.” A relatively simple request.
It’s a challenge. I don’t expect the public or the opposition, necessarily, to be too sympathetic to the staff that have to go through that. But I’ve talked to them. These are sincere public servants trying to do their job, and they get frustrated by it from time to time. They can see the pattern and the intent, and again, I’m speaking more at the federal level than I am today at this.
I would say this about the services that we use. Again, moving more and more towards the cloud, moving more and more towards technology and if we’re allowing, as we are in this act, some of those server farms to not be located in British Columbia, our vigilance has to be increased with respect to what security protocols are in place. It remains a concern for me. It has to be, and is, stipulated in the act and has to be increased because the vigilance is so important. It’s so important.
I admit that I must come from a different generation or of a different orientation. I’m constantly amazed, in this day and age in which privacy is so important, how much privacy people are also willing to give up at the same time. The conspiracy theories about the COVID vaccine having a chip and people not wanting to be followed around were sheer idiocy, but at the same time, they would text me and tweet me from their phone.
I’d say, “Well, if you’re worried about being followed around, you need to put your phone away, because every free service that you’re using is data mining the heck out of you and knows your movements and purchases,” never mind social media and people self-disclosing the most embarrassing things for a few more tweets and likes. It’s not something I necessarily understand. It is what it is, yet we remain dedicated and vigilant to the idea of people having those rights to privacy.
Because of the mandatory reporting of privacy breaches that are based in these amendments, I would hope that the opposition and other potential critics would join us in saying that that’s important, that breaches should never be a voluntary thing, that we should disclose when something has gone wrong, when information has gone out.
Again, this has happened to both the public and private sector, and it is critically bad in term of that thing that I talked about earlier, which is trust. That when mistakes are made, or our security wasn’t secure enough — which is always a challenge, as I’ve said, these days — we are forthcoming with the public, and saying it happened. Either someone did something wrong, or we were attacked in a way that is novel. We have not seen it before. It is a foreign actor, and this is the breach that’s happened.
It’s quite an invasive experience, as somebody who had my student loan information breached through a federal account. Suddenly, I and 25,000 other people who had taken student loans had all of our information disclosed through a breach. I believe it was through the federal government. That didn’t feel good. It felt like a bit of an invasion into my home — that somewhere out there what I owed in student loans from having gone to school was made public, and someone could go now and search it through a public database.
That’s a small breach, compared to some of the things that we’ve seen. Public health records. We had incidents of British Columbians crossing the border into the U.S., and because of a breach that had taken place and had somehow got into the hands of the national security system in the States, they were being questioned on their health status, with detailed information. Border guards asking Canadians about whether they had AIDS or not, whether they still had cancer or not, as they crossed the border. Talk about an invasive experience.
I’ll end here because I know there are a number of colleagues that want to join in this conversation. I think we’re going to have, and we do clearly have, points of disagreement, the concerns around the fees that we’ve seen expressed from the opposition and from others outside this place — warranted. Bring it on. Talk about the tensions that are in there. But I also think that there are places of, I would hope, strong agreement in understanding the critical role of information.
We know sunlight is the best disinfectant — that bringing forward the information, self-disclosing, ideally, where we can but also allowing for a vibrant and vital freedom-of-information policy within this province, which we’ve had from time to time, and also protecting the rights of individuals and communities, knowing that information always has to be made available but not in such a way that would ever expose any of the people that we represent in this place to undue public attention.
Colleagues will know this, particularly when it comes to health care. I live in a very small community. You describe too much of what certain individuals are experiencing on the health care level, and they can be identified. We have seen this on mental health records. That, I will defend to the end. When community members, individuals, particularly in smaller towns, are suddenly made known for something because the government has disclosed information in such a way that they can be found and understood, that could be a source of great harm for those individuals. Mr. Speaker, I know that you live in a much larger city, but I would imagine also you can understand the experience of that.
One of my earliest political activations back east was in the AIDS movement and the desire from public officials at that time to publicly identify those with AIDS, to have their employer know, to have those parents at their schools know. It was such an incredibly painful and horrible time, and a time of great fear, we understood.
Where information and data that had been collected by the government…. It was suggested by politicians at that time that we should publicly disclose that. Some talked about lawn signs, for God’s sakes. A horrible, horrible time where that tension between information that the public wants to know and the privacy and the rights of that individual clashed. There were those that were seeking what I would call extreme views to expose those people, I thought, to obvious threats of violence and discrimination.
We fought that back, but it was not easy, because there was a popular public sentiment at a time in our country where the public safety overrode the rights of that individual’s privacy if they had AIDS. We, hopefully and thankfully, passed through that era, but we should always remain vigilant in understanding that natural tension that must exist between these two elements that are contained within this act itself and for us as a government and as a Legislature.
A. Wilkinson: We all, I think, recognize that freedom of information, in the public mind, is a pretty dry topic. It doesn’t attract an awful lot of excitement. But it is fundamental to what we do in government now and how government conducts its affairs.
I’ve had, perhaps, too much experience with it as a deputy minister, on the disclosure side as a lawyer asking for disclosure, as a minister and now in opposition. I’ve seen many facets of this. And I should note in passing that the member opposite, the Minister for Natural Resource Operations, has also seen many facets of this. FOI was the vehicle under which his lucrative contract under the NDP, after he had left federal government, was disclosed: a $250,000 payment for which we’ve seen next to nothing.
We’ve also seen the comments from the member opposite when he was in the federal scene. Talking about freedom of information in 2017, he said: “Getting the thinking behind government decisions is the point.” Why did you make this decision over that decision? And particularly in that mould: “Why did you keep the Prime Minister’s cabinet exempt from access to information?” The member, at the time, thought this was a fundamental tenet of democracy, because he was in opposition. Now that the NDP find themselves with a handsome majority, they are looking to dismantle the edifice that they built.
The history going back to the ’80s…. When there started to be the accumulation of large amounts of government information, the use of computers made it more accessible and manageable rather than paper files, and amongst social democrats around the world, including the NDP, there was a major push for freedom of information. It was led by European labour parties, by the British Labour Party, who eventually implemented it in the U.K., once they formed office. It’s one of the first things they did when the Blair government came in, in 1987.
Lo and behold, this act was brought in, in 1993, by the Harcourt NDP government. Why? Because of that worldwide movement of making governments accountable; making sure that government works for the person on street, not for itself; making sure that the regular folks, the ones who need a hand, are actually the focus of government work, not lining the pockets of government members or employees and not in a self-serving way that will continue the election of the government of the day.
That’s where we see the NDP going now, unravelling this basic concept that they put into place. FOI was designed to put control back in the hands of the people. It was fighting back on government control. But lo and behold, once the NDP have majority, where do they go? They seek to centralize power in their own hands and take it away from the people of British Columbia.
My own experience of this came up when I was involved with the Civil Liberties Association. I joined that organization in 1988 because it had succeeded in the courts in putting a high-handed government back in its place, getting inappropriate government conduct and policy back into the hands of the people of British Columbia. The goal was to make government open and accountable, to fling open the doors of government. That’s what the Harcourt government did after 1991, and they were proud to pass this legislation.
I will remember for a long, long time that I caught the ferry over to Victoria one evening with my family. I went out on the deck, and lo and behold, there was David Flaherty, British Columbia’s first Privacy Commissioner. I was then president of the Civil Liberties Association. He and I had a long conversation about just how fundamental freedom of information is to the functioning of a democratic government.
A modern democratic government has no reason to keep the doors closed. All of the information is available on government data sets. Why isn’t it disclosed? Because it might bother the government of the day. It might hurt their political chances. So as Mr. Flaherty said, throw the doors open. Make British Columbia a leader in the world.
When I became a deputy minister, I was pretty promptly informed by the other deputy ministers across the country that British Columbia had the most open freedom-of-information regime in all of Canada. Look who’s backsliding now. Look who’s trying to wind that down to serve their own interests: the New Democratic Party of British Columbia. This is shameful. This is nothing but a procedural attempt, using fees, to keep people’s noses out of the government that they own. It is not appropriate for government to restrict access to information in the way that this government intends to.
We’re supposed to be in an era where citizens have a role, and FOI gives people access and influence in government they otherwise don’t have. It also gives the media a direct link to stories that they need to get out. We saw that last week, as my colleagues have pointed out, with Penny Daflos of CTV News bringing out the critically important information that we have a government that has decided to suppress information on the biggest pandemic in our lives and certainly in the last few centuries.
This is a government that is manipulating information about an epidemic. That is so profoundly wrong, yet we never would have found out without Ms. Daflos and her efforts on FOI. It is not appropriate for modern government to protect itself from the prying eyes of the media and from the genuine requests of the members of the public. Yet here we see two fundamental steps being taken that are wrong.
The first is the charging of fees. It is plainly and simply designed to suppress, deter and stop freedom-of-information requests. And the fact that this government has got the gall to say it’s going to apply that to the official opposition is a fundamental attack on the modern state of democracy here in British Columbia.
It is so appallingly wrong to say that the government should be protected from the opposition. That’s why we have this Legislature. That’s why we’re here, why we sit for 100 days a year: to hold the government to account. And now we’re to be charged a fee for the privilege of finding out the truth. Surely the members opposite can see the error in that — that it’s just a fundamental breach of their whole commitment to democracy as social democrats.
The second thing is foreign access. The idea that we can now take all of the information that I was responsible for as Minister of Citizens’ Services, which we stored on a server farm in Kamloops because it was earthquake-proof, it was secure, the hydroelectrical supply was highly secure, it was the place where our information was safe…. Now we hear this government wants to start exporting it to who knows where.
Have we learned nothing from Cambridge Analytica? Have we learned nothing from the United States government’s activity after passing the PATRIOT Act, which allows them to extract any and all information which the United States government has access to in any venue, in any form? Have we learned nothing from the efforts of Mr. Snowden, who used to work at the National Security Agency and disclosed the depth and breadth of U.S. government access to information and abuse of information? Yet a New Democratic government with a large majority is suddenly saying: “Don’t worry your pretty little head about that. We’ve got it under control. Just pass the legislation, and we’ll tell you later.”
It extends, too, to the Facebook scandal on data scraping. Is this government now going to make us all vulnerable to that kind of thing with our government-based information? This is just a fundamental error that this government is making, yet they have the arrogance to say that this is modernizing. If anything, this is going back into the 1980s and taking us to a much darker place than we worked hard to get to.
We’ve had this FOI legislation for 28 years. It’s cumbersome. It’s difficult. It’s hard work. That’s the whole idea. That’s why we have it in the first place. We wait months right now for FOI requests to come through. There are sometimes fees associated with it. It’s not easy. It’s tedious work.
As a deputy minister, I saw that in process, and I was told by the FOI managers in the ministry: “Deputy Minister Wilkinson, here’s the information that’s going out. You have no say on what goes out. It’s just so that you have a heads-up and can prepare the response that’ll be necessary.” That’s the way the law is set up. That’s the way the law should work. That should be accessible to every citizen in British Columbia.
This government has also decided to ignore the advice of the all-party task force, which said that fees should not be charged. It’s ignoring the advice of its own Privacy Commissioner, who is opposed to fees. Are these sham structures — independent officers of the Legislature and all-party legislative committees — that are just set up as a straw man to keep us and the people of British Columbia in the dark until we get blindsided by this legislation?
The most oppressive part of this, I think, is the fact that this government has the gall to introduce it on a Monday, then to have debate on the Tuesday and are probably planning to vote on it on the Wednesday. It’s all designed to avoid public scrutiny, so that this high-handed behaviour can continue. We see the members opposite blithely reading off their prepared notes and saying: “Don’t worry your pretty little heads. We’re modernizing.” You’re not modernizing.
You’re hiding. You’re suppressing. You’re playing games. You’re manipulating. You’re doing everything that you despised when you were in opposition, and now you’re feathering your own bed because you have a majority.
Deputy Speaker: Member, if you might temper your language. Arguing in that way, as you know, is unparliamentary. Thank you.
A. Wilkinson: The data residency provisions. This was something that we grappled with in Citizens’ Services, and many, many times I was telling senior staff that you do not export data from Canada for any purpose. That’s why we paid for a very expensive server farm, because it was necessary to retain the confidence of British Columbians that their data was in safe hands and would not be subject to the kinds of massive leaks that have characterized data storage in the last decade.
We know it’s misused. We know it leads to the kinds of phone calls that the member opposite said he got from a fraudster. That’s how the data is misused. Why would we open the door to that? Who is asking for this? I’ll come back to this later, because no one is asking for this legislation, except a few power-hungry people on the NDP benches. There is no purpose served for the people of British Columbia. There is no purpose served for our democracy. This is not a public policy goal. There was nothing in the election about this. This is purely self-serving, selfish and totally inappropriate in a modern democracy.
The member opposite said that sunlight is the best disinfectant. Well, they’re putting up venetian blinds right now. The member opposite said that these are sincere, heartfelt requests that come in from the people of British Columbia and Canada to freedom-of-information disclosure services. Correct. That’s what it means to be a citizen of this country and this province — that you have a role, that you’re a real part of this democracy and that you’re entitled to the truth.
The suppression of the truth, through dismantling of freedom of information, is fundamentally wrong. It’s a source of huge disappointment to me that some of the members opposite that I consider to be friends are prepared to look at me with a straight face and support this legislation. I think it’s utterly shameful.
We’re told it’s cost recovery. Nonsense. This is a deterrent to engagement in an open society. This government spends $7 million an hour, over $100,000 a minute — and now they’re concerned with cost recovery for some freedom-of-information requests? I don’t think so. This is a way to keep the nose of the public out of the government data vault.
This goes to: why do we have freedom-of-information legislation at all? It’s to be accessible to everyone and, most especially, the media and the opposition, who are paid and retained by the public to keep an eye on the government benches. Instead, what we see is a government with a high-handed majority that is prepared to start to shut the door on this basic democratic function of freedom of information.
The fee is clearly designed as a deterrent. It’s designed as an obstacle. The members opposite will say: “You don’t even know the amount yet.” You’ve told us that it’s cost recovery. We’re told that it’s something in the range of $50 to process a request. I can tell you, from the perspective of a former Minister of Citizens’ Services and of a former deputy minister in an economic ministry, that it’s an awful lot more than $55 to process an FOI request, but that’s what it means to live in a democracy.
None of us on this side is going to sit by and watch this government simply push people out of the work of government and deny them access to information they’re entitled to, by pretending that they’re just engaging in cost recovery. That is a sham.
The Premier himself has summarized his approach — in more convenient times, when he could comment — in April of 2015. “The whole point of having access to information is so we can all make reasonable judgments about the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of our political leadership,” said John Horgan in the Times Colonist.
Deputy Speaker: Names, Member. We do not use names in this House. Thank you, Member.
A. Wilkinson: Well, the Premier didn’t say it, Mr. Speaker. He was a civilian at the time. But now that he is the Premier, he has apparently changed his tune, because now is the time to suppress access to democratic rights. Now is the time to deny information about government. Now is the time for the NDP to put up these sham excuses of why they’re going to make it more difficult for media, opposition and citizens to engage in their proper roles.
Of course, we have to wonder: if the NDP, in their typical fashion, end up in opposition again, will they be screaming to the heights that this is so unfair and that it’s so wrong? Government is not a matter of convenience. Democratic rights matter, and they should be held, like a constitutional right, above the fray. For the last 30 years, that has been the case with freedom of information. It’s a fact in our democracy.
We are not Nicaragua, Belarus, Poland or Hungary, where these things can be dismantled. We’re a democratic society, where we’re proud of our institutions and we expect them to function on behalf of the people. Democracy is not about the convenience of the government. Democracy is about making it work for the people of British Columbia. That’s what this government is now grinding down.
Most recently we’ve seen this rather desperately unfortunate disclosure that the COVID numbers may actually be incorrect. “Incorrect” is a neutral term. “Incorrect” is a clinical, polite term, because none of us want to live in a province in the middle of a pandemic where some people will say that the information has been suppressed and withheld and that the government has been dishonest.
Goodness knows, we don’t want our public health enterprise to suddenly have the sands under its foundation washed away. When it comes to disease control, governments have to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Most recently, we’ve seen Fraser Health suppress the truth. We don’t know what the truth is now about patient counts in British Columbia hospitals. That is wrong.
Most of us lived through the HIV epidemic, and we know how important disclosure was there. We know how important the truth was there. Yet when we reached the COVID pandemic that affects many, many more people, somehow the truth has become a casualty. Many of us know, the Speaker in particular, the cost of the mistruths and the lies in the 1980s in HIV and its treatment.
We cannot repeat that again. We have to have an open society where these things are known, disclosed. They should be disclosed voluntarily, but if they’re not, the public, the people, the media and the opposition have a right to get them under freedom of information, to get them promptly and to get them without a fee, so that the people of British Columbia can know how to conduct their affairs safely, prudently and in a way that will save their own lives.
We’ve already seen that in Ontario, the United Kingdom, you just type in your postal code, and you get case counts instantly. They’ve had that since last June. Nothing of the sort has ever been made possible in British Columbia. Apparently, we’re not in need of that information. We don’t need to know. Somebody will do it for us. We just wouldn’t understand. That’s the kind of condescending approach of government that leads to mistrust, and this is a time when we need maximum trust in government, not erosion of our basic rights.
We’re also seeing, unfortunately, the emerging picture of incomplete and failed disclosure in our school system. For those of you who listened to the national news on the CBC this morning, on the seven o’clock, the eight o’clock news, the lead story was an explosion in the COVID case count in the United Kingdom. It’s almost all in school children.
The immunization program for teenagers has been slow to get going. They were very successful in immunizing adults, but today they had 41,000 new cases of COVID in the United Kingdom, mostly in children and young adults. They disclose, by postal code, where those cases are.
We find it appropriate — or at least the NDP government finds it appropriate — to refuse to tell people. This is fundamental. These are people’s children. If there’s a mass outbreak at Quilchena Elementary School down the street from my home, I’m entitled to know about it. So are the parents. So are the children. Why wouldn’t you tell them the truth? Yet somehow we’re told that well, we should go to FOI and maybe we’ll get a redacted set of documents three months from now, if we’re lucky.
That’s not democratic. That’s not fair. That’s not in pursuit of getting rid of this virus in our society. That’s designed to protect government from prying eyes, and that is wrong. It’s a condescending, Edwardian, patriarchal view of how to conduct government. It is 100 years out of date. Most certainly, it is 30 years out of date — since this government, the NDP government, brought in FOI — which is a sad anniversary to have resonate, through COVID numbers not being disclosed, to point out just the duplicity of this legislation.
Most recently we heard about a $500 million technology development fund that will be funded by this government. Miraculously, it’s to be protected from freedom of information. Anyone who has been involved in private equity and publicly traded information and the public trading markets knows that transparency, currency of information, is the bedrock of those markets.
If you suppress or falsify information, you’ll be prosecuted, you’ll be delisted, you’ll face reputational risk, you’ll probably lose your financing, and it’s over. That’s how the commercial world works these days, because of the availability of data.
What do we do? This government turns to every single human being in British Columbia and says: “Give me $100. I’m going to invest on your behalf. I refuse to tell you in what.” And guess what? A former Finance Minister with no qualifications whatsoever in technology, business or financial analysis will be the chair of the board, and that board is not subject to disclosure of any information. This is just laughable in the modern era. To think that we’re being taxed into investing in unknown entities — this is the sort of thing you expect to hear about from Brazil or Argentina.
Where’s the transparency in the financial transaction that this government is about to engage in on our behalf? The answer is: “Don’t worry your pretty little heads. We’re experts in the technology sector.” Well, I spent four years of my life dismantling the NDP expertise in the technology and business sectors, as the deputy minister responsible for economic development.
The NDP investments in the ’90s were an utter sham that resulted in the writing off of hundreds of millions of dollars of invested money, which proved to have been just flushed down the toilet. Now we’re being told that we’re not going to be able to find out what it’s being invested in until it’s far too late.
In summary, Mr. Speaker, I turn to the members opposite, the members of the NDP, and this is reminiscent of the last time I stood in this chamber about ten days ago.
Why did you get elected? What was the purpose? Why did you want to be in government?
Deputy Speaker: Through the Chair, Member.
A. Wilkinson: The Speaker reminds me that it has to go through the Chair. He, of course, is on that side in another role without a uniform on.
So I can ask the Chair directly: why get elected?
I don’t expect an answer from the Chair.
Deputy Speaker: If the member would like a response, he’s free to talk with me outside the chamber, but I am looking after the interests of this chamber, and I don’t want to interrupt the debate.
A. Wilkinson: As social democrats, as members of the NDP, surely the members want to be proud of what they do. Surely, they don’t want to hang their heads in shame. Surely, they don’t want to divert their gaze when someone brings something up.
When someone asked, “What about my school? Can I have the COVID numbers?” they don’t want to provide excuses. “What happened to that investment money that Carole James took away from us?” They don’t want to hide their eyes and pretend they don’t know.
What about freedom of information, where I was allowed to get information on what’s going on in government? You guys made it basically impossible by putting fees on, so nobody does it anymore. Is that why social democrats seek elected office, to suppress the truth? What happened to the whole Tommy Douglas view of the world — that this is going to be by and of and for the people?
That seems to have been lost now that there’s a majority NDP government, because now they have power. Once there’s power in hand, there’s a desire to extend it and remove it from scrutiny and to debase the system of democracy that we’ve got in this province and in this country.
There’s a huge amount of work to do in this province. This summer, this fall, we’ve seen we have a badly broken ambulance service. Compared to when I was practising medicine, it is a sham what’s going on right now. It is embarrassing and potentially lethal.
We have a huge Indigenous reconciliation and an economic development agenda before us. We have a health system that’s bursting at the seams. Yet what is the legislation brought before this House in this fall session? An attempt to suppress access to information. There’s basically nothing else on this order paper this fall.
A housing crisis is ruining the dreams of half a million British Columbians or more, yet we see no attempt to do anything about it in this chamber in this session. Nothing. Instead, we see a naked attempt to consolidate power and prevent scrutiny of a government that is lost and has no agenda.
This legislation puts sand into the gears of democracy. It manipulates data. It exports our data to foreign holding sources which we have no control over, whether they’re in the United States or elsewhere. This will allow the hiding of information. Now this government wants it enshrined in statute that they can export our data and prevent us from accessing our own information through FOI requests.
Who is asking for this? It’s worthy of a pregnant pause because who is asking for this? No one. A few power-hungry members of the NDP cabinet.
The NDP have a majority. They have the power. They have the chance to implement the dreams that they hopefully formulated over the last 20 years as they contemplated taking public office. Instead, what would we see? A power grab, an attempt to suppress our democratic institutions.
I would simply ask the members opposite, and particularly the executive council, to stop doing things that you’re ashamed of and come up with an agenda that you’re proud of.
Deputy Speaker: Thank you to all members.
I just want to be clear that I work for all members of this House, not one party or another party. I work for all of you, and I don’t want that to be taken lightly.
Okay, Member? Thank you.
S. Furstenau: I’m looking for an adjective, a verb here. I’m standing today to speak to the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Amendment Act with a bit of a heavy heart, actually.
I think I want to start where I would hope that all of us would be striving to end up: openness; transparency; freedom of information; accountable government; healthy, strong, trustworthy democracy. What would that ideal scenario look like?
Well, it’s interesting, because looking at the Legislative Assembly’s 2016 Report of the Special Committee to Review the Freedom of Information and Privacy Act, they actually speak a little bit to this vision. Quoting from that report: “Modern democracies around the world have public sector access to information and privacy laws. They reflect fundamental democratic values, including openness, transparency and accountability, as well as informational privacy. In Canada, rights created by access to information and privacy laws have been recognized by the courts as quasi-constitutional in nature.”
The work of this committee in 2016 was significant. After briefings from the Ministry of Technology, Innovation and Citizens’ Services; the Information and Privacy Commissioner; officials from the Ministry of Finance on the Loukidelis report; attending a Privacy and Access conference; and three dates of public hearings with presentations from 24 public bodies, advocacy groups, stakeholders and individual citizens, the committee had seven sessions of deliberations. At the end of this nearly year-long process, the committee, which included two members who are currently in the government caucus and one member currently in the official opposition caucus, submitted its report to the Legislature on May 3, 2016.
One thing I’ve heard consistently since coming to this House, from members of both caucuses, is some variation on: “Oh yes, question period can appear very combative and hostile, but it’s mostly theatrical. It’s not really reflective of the good work that can happen in the Legislature, especially the work we do in committees. We really come together across party lines and collaborate.” I have heard this over and over and over again from members of this House.
I agree, with a caveat. Good, collaborative, consensus-building work absolutely does happen in committees. I’ve been part of that. Often committees can deliver recommendations that would go far beyond what a governing party might be willing to do on its own, recommendations that truly reflect where the citizens we serve are at. We’re emboldened to meet our citizens and the public where they’re at because we’re doing it collectively, collaboratively. It’s all of us. The recommendations from committees are informed by a wide range of experts, advocates and members of the public who are invested in an issue.
Committee work is indeed an example of some of the best work that we as legislators do in this building. It is an example of the kind of representation we should all be striving for, where the members of this chamber all have the opportunity to contribute to outcomes, policy and legislation, regardless of whether they’re a member of the government caucus, the official opposition or the third party.
That’s what I’ve heard from so many members. MLAs are often most proud, in terms of their legislative work, of the work they do in committees — coming together, collaborating across party lines, building consensus and providing informed recommendations to the House and to the government.
Why the caveat? The value of that work can’t just be theoretical or, worse, theatrical. It needs to actually inform policy and legislation for there to be a true value of that collaborative, consensus-driven work. Otherwise, it’s little more than a make-work project.
I’m dismayed by how many recommendations committees bring forward to this House that aren’t translated into policy or legislation. It would actually make a fascinating research project. How many reports to the Legislature, how many recommendations from committee, actually end up translating into policy in Legislature?
Let’s review some of the recommendations from the 2016 legislative committee on this act. They identified the following issues as being significant in the context of the review: proactive disclosure; duty to document; information management in government; data sovereignty; the application of FIPPA to the subsidiary corporations and other entities; the FOI process, including timelines to respond to access requests and anonymity of applicants; and mandatory breach notification. A year’s work, committed legislators on the committee, several recommendations.
Let’s start with the recommendation for proactive disclosure. The committee report quoted Laura Millar, an information records and archives consultant who made the case for a greater emphasis on proactive disclosure. “Why not routinely make available as much evidence as possible,” indicated Laura, “rather than wait for the public to seek specific records through a limited routine-release policy and an increasingly and sometimes unnecessarily backlogged regime of access only when requested?”
Laura pointed out — and I think that we can all agree on this: “Open government can save time and money as well as improve trust in government if the processes for creating records in the first place are designed to support both accountability and access.”
What was the committee’s ultimate position on proactive disclosure?
“The committee believes all public bodies should view their information responsibilities in that light. Open and easy access to records and archives should be the norm. In principle, public bodies should be proactively disclosing records whenever disclosure is in the public interest.
“To the extent possible, documents should be created and structured in such a way that they can be proactively released, either in whole or in part, on a routine basis. Records for proactive disclosure should include data sets and other machine-readable records, and there should be a requirement for data sets to be released in a reusable format.”
Our colleagues, this Legislature, presented those recommendations and that recommendation: proactive disclosure of information to this House. Unanimously agreed on after a year of committee work, looking at this act and how best to serve citizens and the public interest. Their number one recommendation was proactive disclosure — be open, be transparent.
It appears that in 2017, this government was still aligned with these goals and values. In his mandate letter to then Minister of Citizens’ Services, the Premier directed her to “improve access to information rules to provide greater public accountability” and “improve response and processing times for freedom-of-information requests.”
Three years later the Premier’s mandate letter to the current minister made no reference to greater public accountability or improving response and processing time to FOI requests.
Indeed, other than the direction to “continue to improve government’s public sector data security and privacy practices,” there’s no mention at all in the minister’s mandate letter to bring forward legislation that amends the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act; no indication in the mandate letter that this kind of legislation was even meant to be on the minister’s agenda.
[N. Letnick in the chair.]
It’s fascinating, however, how the Premier responded when his government was criticized for not including updates to FOI laws in the minister’s mandate letter a year ago. He indicated that a growing number of FOI requests came from a political party: “It’s my view that those requests are not designed to improve understanding of the delivery of programs. They’re designed for political benefit, and we’ll continue to work with that. I was a beneficiary of that as an opposition member. I understand it. But I would like to get back to first principles when it comes to freedom of information and protection of privacy.”
I think that in light of this legislation, we should expect some clarity from the Premier and the minister as to what those first principles are, because they don’t seem to align with the first principles of the legislative committee that presented its report to this chamber in 2016.
Rather than the proactive disclosure recommended by the 2016 committee, this legislation introduces a barrier to information in the form of a fee. We don’t know what fee, because that’s up to the government to determine in regulation. But we do know that a fee will absolutely be a barrier, perhaps not for the political party that the Premier didn’t appreciate asking too many questions, but for the press, for researchers, for the public. And let’s not forget this is ultimately a fee for the public — whoever they are — to access information that belongs to the public.
Privacy Commissioner Michael McEvoy weighed in yesterday, stating that too many FOI requests from the opposition is not a justification for a fee. He rightly points out that the opposition party’s ability to access government records under FOI is a fundamental part of the law and the system and not sufficient rationale to impose a fee on everybody.
The work of opposition members and opposition parties is integral to the health of democracy. I expect no governments particularly like the scrutiny or the questions or the accountability that opposition members and opposition parties consistently try to get, but it is the job in a healthy democracy — to hold government to account. That should never be seen as a problem to government. They should absolutely recognize they will be back on the opposition benches one day and they will have that utterly essential and important job to do.
Mr. McEvoy also stated: “Oppositions gathering information about how government systems are running is a part of a free-flowing, properly functioning democracy.” One of the aspects of this debate that I’m finding a little demoralizing has been the suggestion from government members that the opposition was somehow worse when it comes to freedom of information and therefore can’t hold this government to account on this legislation. It’s a terrible way for any government to try to justify anything they’re doing.
“When they were in power, they were secretive. They didn’t disclose information.” The upshot of the logic of this argument appears to be: “Don’t criticize us, because they were bad too.” I would think that the public expects better of us.
If committee work is the best that we can do, this level of debate certainly is not. Shouldn’t we be aspiring to be better just as a matter of course, applying what we’ve learned, aspiring to do work that we will be proud of when we leave this place? We are all just caretakers of these seats. Our collective goal, I would truly hope, is to deliver to the next representative a model of care that recognizes our service is first and foremost to our constituents and to the people of British Columbia.
Let’s go back to the 2016 report, recommendation 2: “Add a duty to document to FIPPA.” The committee referred to the 2015 Information and Privacy Commissioner’s report Access Denied: Record Retention and Disposal Practices of the Government of British Columbia. Recommendation 11 from that report stated: “Government should create a legislative duty to document within FIPPA as a clear indication that it does not endorse ‘oral government’ and that it is committed to be accountable to citizens by creating an accurate record of its key decisions and actions.”
This is one of the things I’ve been thinking about a lot lately, particularly as it pertains to COVID. It’s not enough to provide data. It’s important, absolutely. It’s essential. We’re in a pandemic. We need information. But what the public actually needs the very most, I think, is an understanding of how decisions are being made — a connecting of the dots — not just: “Here’s the data, here’s the decision.”
Here’s the data. Here are the outcomes we’re trying to achieve. Here’s how we’re going to measure those outcomes and how we’re going to measure our success. Here are all the steps and the information we use to make decisions.
In a global health crisis, what we all need the very most are two things, really: one, to know that government is working in our best interests and the best interests of public health; but two, that we have access to the very best information to also be making personal choices for ourselves and for our families to stay as well as we possibly can. When there are gaps, not just in data, but gaps in that decision-making process, we can’t be certain if we have all of the best understanding and information.
The recommendation from the committee about a duty to document isn’t disconnected from this. The worry about oral government — government that doesn’t keep track of its decision-making processes, government that can’t be held accountable to those processes because we can’t know them…. That’s a worry. Government needs to be accountable — unfortunately, no legislated mandate in this bill to ensure duty to document.
Recommendation 5 of the committee was to retain the data sovereignty requirement in section 30.1 of FIPPA. The committee heard opposing views on this matter, with some advocating to maintain the sovereignty while others pointed to a need for the ability to store data outside of B.C. Ultimately, the committee concluded:
“While the committee appreciates the concerns expressed by health authorities, universities, schools and other public bodies regarding their inability to use new, innovative technology in their operations, the committee is not persuaded that there are no available or adequate alternatives that do not involve storage or access outside of Canada. The committee agrees with government that it should continue to monitor changes in privacy laws and in technology solutions to ensure that the provision remains harmonized and that it is relevant and practical.”
This bill does not follow the committee’s recommendation and instead allows for public bodies to store data outside of B.C. The Privacy Commissioner weighed in on this as well. He said:
“What is exceedingly troubling, however, is that government now proposes to allow public bodies to send British Columbians’ personal information outside Canada without explaining how they will properly protect it. Without concrete alternative protections for people’s data, the government is effectively asking the Legislative Assembly for a blank cheque to eliminate the current restrictions on public bodies accessing and storing people’s personal information outside of Canada.”
I think we can all agree that this is a serious shift that this legislation brings in and that we, as representatives, as members of this chamber, are going to be asked to vote on this without clear information from government as to how the data and personal information of British Columbians will be protected if it’s being stored outside of Canada. I think that’s a lot to ask from us.
I’ve only gone through a few of the recommendations from the 2016 committee’s report, but I’ll cut to the chase. This bill adopts none of the recommendations of the report. In some cases, it does the opposite of those recommendations. Turns out it was a make-work project after all, rather than the embodiment of the very best work that we can do in this House.
Rather than take the direction provided by the committee, this government essentially says: “Trust us.” “Trust us” is becoming a common theme. Trust us to determine the number of sick days in paid sick leave legislation. Trust us when we don’t disclose to the public how many people are recovering from COVID in hospital who are no longer considered infectious. Trust us when we say no old-growth is being logged. Trust us when we say we’re climate leaders while we increase subsidies to oil and gas. Trust us that everything is going just fine at Site C.
The link between transparency and trust is essential. We should all be thinking about trust right now, particularly those of us in this chamber. The Edelman Trust Barometer, published annually, provides a snapshot of the levels of trust in government, NGOs, media and business. This year’s report indicates that after last year’s spike in trust, there has been a decline in 2021, with governments across Canada seeing an 11-point drop in trust in six months. Government leaders, CEOs, religious leaders are not trusted to do what is right. Forty-six percent believe that government leaders are purposely trying to mislead them.
The antidote to that is transparency. We should take this seriously. We’re all seeing evidence of this in our own communities — lack of trust in science, lack of trust in advice on vaccines, lack of trust in the work that we do here, lack of trust in public institutions. We should see this as a very serious issue and one that we collectively commit to addressing.
This government always has the opportunity to commit to earning the trust that is so essential to the health and good functioning of our democracy. Hear and respond to the valid concerns and criticisms that have been raised about this legislation in this chamber, publicly, by the Privacy Commissioner, by the press. Recognize that it’s not a weakness to listen and to adjust based on informed and relevant input and information. Consider the position of the opposition parties, and recognize what criticisms would be raised if the tables were turned. How would members respond to this bill if they were in opposition?
Please don’t point to failings of the past as a way to justify legislation that does not meet the expectations of the public today and our hopes and aspirations for what we deliver to the future. Rather than adopt a defensive posture, approach this with a lens of: how does this work serve or not serve the public interest?
We and, I expect, the official opposition will be canvassing this bill at length in committee stage and hopefully providing valuable and important input that this government can hear, and to show that it recognizes that the most important relationship with the public is the trust relationship. We have to take that seriously.
L. Doerkson: Thank you for the opportunity to offer my thoughts on Bill 22. To be quite frank, I’m somewhat shocked that we’re standing here today to debate a bill that could further stifle access to information that is created by this government and this province.
I am shocked particularly in this time of great need, of course, for information for our residents, groups and, of course, the media. There’s a great desire on the part of all of these groups to better understand COVID and the information around it, a better understanding of how and what inspired decisions, as the previous speaker touched on. There’s a great desire to access information about wildfires in this province or information with respect to health care, ambulances, behind-the-scenes information about our school systems or how decisions are being made about communities like Lytton and Monte Creek.
I can’t imagine how many times the words “transparency and accountability” have likely been recorded by Hansard in this place, but it must be thousands of times, and how many times those words have been quoted by media outlets throughout British Columbia. Anything — and I do mean anything — that impedes the freedom to access this information about this government or the inner workings of it is wrong. This information should be easily accessed by members of the public and, of course, of the media of this province, and the country as well.
I speak with many years of experience in the print media business in many small communities throughout the province, and I would suggest that under the current rules for access, it isn’t exactly easy to access some of this information now. Certainly, there can be long timelines in getting the information. The bill simply adds more complexity for that access.
We heard a quote earlier. I’m going to quote it again, and I’ll refer to it as the Premier, although the earlier speaker was corrected on that. The now Premier said: “I think all British Columbians should be concerned when their government hides things from them. The whole point of having access to information is so we can all make reasonable judgments about the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of our political leadership.” That was in the Times Colonist on April 30, 2015.
Our Information and Privacy Commissioner says: “It poses an obstacle to access and accountability, and not just for media. It could be a parent group, for example, that finds itself making access-to-information requests to multiple health authorities and to the Ministry of Health and other ministries. You could see how that number could add up awfully quickly and be a deterrent to people making legitimate requests. It is not a positive development, and it does not add accountability or transparency.” That was in the Vancouver Sun, and there are those words again.
We’ve seen in recent weeks, months and, in fact, even today that not only is the information hard to access but almost impossible to access some of it in its entirety. As I said even this morning, we’ve heard of 55 of 79 documents from Fraser Health being released that were tampered with or blacked out. There was information on those 55 pages that should be accessible by the people of British Columbia, but what’s more alarming and more suspicious is when these pages are released in this manner. What is being hidden under that ink, and more importantly, why?
I, along with many people in this House, am very interested in clarity around this legislation and reasons as to why it’s being introduced, especially in light of the amount of comments opposing it. Make no mistake about it. There is a reason for this legislation, and the government knows exactly what it’s doing by bringing it to this House.
The bill ignores advice of the last all-party task force. It has ignored points regarding fees made by our Privacy Commissioner — fees to access information in the province of British Columbia. I’ve heard members of the government categorize these fees as minimal, but have not been clear about them. Certainly, I haven’t heard about any maximums. Might these fees be made high enough to discourage interest in seeking information? Could these fees become a deterrent to access this information by not only the media but groups and individuals as well?
I don’t know the answer to that, but certainly, I can predict how that tool might be used to discourage access to this very, very important information. There certainly needs to be much more clarity around this subject, much more transparency. The Privacy Commissioner noted that he opposed imposing fees, and as I said before, those comments were ignored. He also noted that the fees will act as a barrier and a deterrent to people making requests. In my opinion, that’s wrong.
B.C. Freedom of Information and Privacy Association has called this “a sad day for transparency and accountability in British Columbia.” Just to get those two words into Hansard one more time, the people of this province, the people that fund this Legislature, are owed transparency and accountability.
I have spent my time speaking of transparency in this House, but now, for just a moment, I want to speak to the security and privacy and data storage of our residents. It’s been suggested that this data may now be stored in jurisdictions outside of British Columbia and perhaps even outside of Canada. While I absolutely want to be clear that information created by our government should be accessible to all, when it comes to data about our residents, this information must be guaranteed to be protected at all costs.
I honestly feel that much of this bill is not right. I feel it does more harm than good to the people of this province. My colleagues have made similar comments and points against much of this bill. But don’t just take my words for it. Please let me leave you with a few quotes to ponder.
The B.C. Freedom of Information and Privacy Association says: “They just undermined the public consultation process through the Legislature, making unilateral changes rather than implement the recommendations of current or previous all-party task forces. Great way to say one thing and do another. Attack transparency.” That was on Twitter on October 18.
This comes from Justin Kulik, a 2020 B.C. NDP candidate for Kelowna–Lake Country. He says: “This is bad policy. Please reconsider. Keeping FOI applications free is crucial. Any fee associated with FOI requests is a barrier. One FOI request for each school district in B.C. would have application fees totalling $1,500. This is a barrier. Do not do this.” Again, Twitter, October 18.
Mr. Kulik had this, also, to say about Bill 22: “Bill 22 makes information harder for the public to access. Fees for FOI requests erode public trust. Keep FOI requests free. Amend the bill, and take out those sections.” Again on Twitter, on October 18.
In closing, I can’t think of a time that the public requests and demands transparency from us more than right now. There are very serious things that our province is dealing with right now. I don’t have to point that out.
The public is counting on us to be very transparent about how we handle those things and to explain how we arrive at those decisions.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak to Bill 22.
A. Olsen: I appreciate the opportunity to speak to Bill 22, the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Amendment Act.
It seems like there are some challenges that this government has with bills numbering 22. I seem to remember going back, just over a year ago, that there were challenges with another Bill 22 in which, actually, the process…. I know that you want me to speak, Mr. Speaker, to this Bill 22. However, I think that drawing the comparison to the previous bill is an important one, simply because what we see with this bill is the Information and Privacy Commissioner coming out and speaking very, very strongly and very quickly, raising concerns about the process, raising concerns about the content and raising concerns about what this means for the future of freedom of information in this province.
Similarly, we saw the same kind of response from independent people of this House, as well as external groups, with the previous Bill 22. That process for that bill didn’t proceed, just as I hope that, at this point, the process for this Bill 22 also does not proceed.
It’s not just Michael McEvoy, our independent Information and Privacy Commissioner, who has come out and spoken strongly with concerns, calling this bill exceedingly troubling and saying that government is effectively asking the Legislative Assembly for a blank cheque to eliminate the current restrictions on public bodies accessing and storing people’s information outside of Canada.
It’s also the executive director of the B.C. Freedom of Information and Privacy Association, Jason Woywada, who says that the legislation falls short, calling it “a missed opportunity, and in key areas, the wrong direction. This government keeps saying one thing and doing another. They say they support greater government transparency, but then introduce proposed legislation that leaves major gaps in our existing law unaddressed.”
Our colleagues have done a very good job today. My colleague from Cowichan Valley did a very good job today outlining the extensive work that committees have done — the committees to review this legislation — as a part of the requirement of the legislation is to review it on a regular basis. Other members of this House have done a very good job of outlining the recommendations that this government — and indeed, former members of those committees who still have seats in this chamber — have ignored. A long list of recommendations.
In fact, actually, I wouldn’t want to lead anybody to believe that there are too many recommendations that were left by those committees to implement. Maybe that’s the reason why this amending legislation ignores the fact that the committee work of the past has left some very specific and detailed recommendations for government to implement, whether it be the previous government, which we’ve heard so much about, or this government, which we’ve also heard so much about. It doesn’t really matter.
I agree with my colleague from Cowichan Valley, who says that we are just, indeed, the caretakers, so we have a current role in this parliament, as members of the opposition, to ask these questions and to demand better from government than there was before.
If we take the approach where we can learn from the mistakes of previous governments and build towards creating a Legislative Assembly that’s more responsive, that’s more accountable, that’s more transparent with information…. If we can achieve that, then we are, in fact, moving forward through time, rather than just staying in one place, which it appears that this debate does.
It’s just kind of like playing tennis with a ball, hitting it back and forth. They’re bad. No, they’re worse. They’re worse. No, they’re bad. The debate in this House then just deteriorates into meaninglessness, frankly.
I think that it’s really important to acknowledge the work, as others have mentioned. I want to talk about the work of committees as well, because it has been some of the most rewarding work that I have participated in since getting elected here into this place in 2017. It is the most collaborative work. It’s where, I think, the sides of this Legislature break down and where we can have debate, where we can have discussions, where we can find common ground. It’s been a very, very rewarding experience to sit in committee and recognize that actually, there is, on many, many issues — maybe not most issues, but many, many issues — little difference in the positions of the members of this place.
It’s not until we sit in these seats in this configuration that we then start to play the political games and the partisan games of pretending that there are great amounts of differences in how we want to approach these things. There isn’t, really, and that is what is found. Anybody who wants to listen in on a public committee meeting will hear how Chairs and Deputy Chairs and members call each other friends and refer to each other as colleagues and look to build each other up, rather than what so often happens in this chamber, a process of tearing each other down unnecessarily.
We still represent this wonderful place that we live in and the wonderful places that that 87 seats in this chamber represent. So when we ignore — when the government that’s represented in here ignores — committee recommendations, what it does is work to undermine and erode the good work that committees do. If the committee members go in and believe that their reports that they write after expending a considerable amount of time and energy out of their schedule, time that could be taken up doing constituency work or could be doing other work that we have here as MLAs, then they’re not going to expend the amount of energy and resources that are necessary to do good committee work.
If the public doesn’t believe that the recommendations of a committee are going to be taken forward by government and implemented, then why would they participate in the committee process? All we get out of that entire situation is an erosion of our democracy. It’s an undermining of the very place that we work every day. None of us can afford — especially now, where we’ve seen so many challenges to our democracy through COVID and an erosion of our democracy — the impact of snap elections and making people feel like “here we go again, another election for seemingly no reason,” eroding the public trust. This bill takes a further swipe at that and further erodes the public trust.
If what we see and what we hear in the debate here is that 2020 recommendations were ignored and 2016 recommendations were ignored, people will start to not want to participate in a process in which the outcome is just government moving on with whatever their agenda is at that particular time. The most unfortunate comments that I’ve heard and seen in the media are from the minister who’s responsible for this bill, suggesting that one of the reasons why it’s on the table is because members of one side or another use it too often, too frequently — overwhelm. Those are comments that I think are really unfortunate.
It is the role of the opposition, of course, to get information and to ask government questions. We want to make sure that we are in this place, building up the confidence of the work that we do in here, not undermining and eroding it, and making sure that everything we do is toward that.
What my worry is…. I’m on a couple of other committees here, where we’ve spent a considerable amount of time working towards what I believe will be comprehensive, thoughtful, engaging recommendations on two very important pieces of legislation that deeply impact British Columbians.
It would be an absolute tragedy if, at the end of that process, the ministers responsible for that legislation say: “Thank you very much. Have a nice day. Not really interested in your work. Going to do whatever we want anyway.”
Unfortunately, that’s what the debate around this bill is starting to paint the picture of: a government uninterested in the work that their peers, their colleagues, do in this place and that’s just going to push forward with whatever they’ve come up with on their own. Part of what is, I think, really establishing that as the reality here — as we’re debating Bill 22, the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Amendment Act — is that one of the committees that I’m currently on right now is the Special Committee to Review the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.
This was a committee that was struck last December. It was a committee that was struck again this past summer. On June 16, the Government House Leader moved the creation of the special committee. The government appointed members to the committee. They gave the committee powers to create subcommittees. They gave the committee powers to conduct public consultations. They asked the committee to report back by June 2022 — basically, one year from when that committee was struck.
One of the most important aspects of that committee work, of course, is opening the discussion up for British Columbians, in a very public way, to contribute to the improvement of the legislation — whether it be stakeholders who have a special interest or a special understanding of the legislation and how it applies to them, or whether it be the public who are just engaging with the legislation for the first time, have some interest in it and want to provide some comments.
What I’ve learned in the committee process is that there is a wide range of people that engage in that process. They engage in it for a variety of different reasons. What this government is doing by moving this legislation forward now, in the way it has been moved forward, is they’re undermining the process that they created. I have to ask the question. Either it was a move to disrespect that process, or it was just simply one part of government not talking to another part of government.
We have a process in which the Government House Leader strikes a committee, and then a minister and a ministry are just moving ahead with legislation on their own. The picture that it paints for British Columbians is that this government is clumsy and uncoordinated. What are we to debate or to discuss now in this committee? How are we to believe that this government is going to open this legislation up in any major way, other than maybe minor amendments through miscellaneous amendments bills, in the future?
We’re going to get through a process where we have to report back. Frankly, we’ve already burned a quarter of a year without getting into the meat of it. That makes no difference. The committee is sitting; the members have met. Yet here we are, debating legislation, much of which, as my colleagues in here have pointed out, is very controversial. Aspects of this, we could get thorough public input and comment on and give good-quality, non-partisan direction from this whole House to government. Instead, now we have to maybe have a discussion about information that has just been amended, if this government has its way and uses its majority to just push this legislation through, despite all of this effort that we’re putting into it.
This is really a test for those backbenchers of the government side of this House, really, when it comes down to it. Maybe they will take the opportunity that is afforded by this lengthy second reading debate to actually go through and understand the implications of this legislation that they’re being asked to stand in support of. I hope they do, because the reality of the impact of this legislation is not minor, just like the work of the committees is not minor.
It’s not just the members of this Legislature that have to meet on a regular basis to do the work. It’s not just the members of the public who have to prepare their comments to the committee, but it’s all the other parts of the apparatus of this place that also have to ramp up their support for that committee work.
It’s not just disrespectful to the members that have been appointed to the committee, but it’s disrespectful to the staff of this Legislative Assembly. It’s disrespectful to the Clerk’s office, which has to put research staff and Clerk staff on that committee. It’s disrespectful to our friends at Hansard, because they also have to put people…. When government calls a committee, everybody else has to find a way to make it happen for us.
I deeply appreciate the fact that when government calls a committee, the staff of this Legislative Assembly make it happen. Nothing could be clearer than when COVID hit and we had to make it happen, where they had to make it happen and they did. But it’s not something that we should just take for granted, and it’s not something that we should think is light work. It’s an effort, and it’s an effort that must be respected. This process, moving a piece of amending legislation in the middle of a review by a special committee, is disrespectful to the entire process.
I want to make some comments with respect to arguments about one party using this more or one individual using this more. I just want to really, I think, agree with and emphasize the comments that my colleague from Cowichan Valley made.
The reality of proactive disclosure, the reality of putting the information out and being transparent at the front end, really, I think, allows for us on the opposition benches and allows for the media and allows for the public to be able to do the job of holding their government accountable. It’s a democracy.
We don’t elect members of a government to then just rule us without any accountability for the next four years, until we have the benefit of yet another election. That’s not how this should work, but that’s how this looks.
This looks like the government doesn’t like having to answer questions. The government doesn’t like having to be able to be held accountable for the decisions they make. The government doesn’t want to talk about the process, with how they arrived at the decision that they made. So they tighten up the information that is not their information. They are stewards of that information and they must be able to make it available to the public, freely.
That’s not what’s happening in this legislation. Freedom of information is not free. There is a charge for it. There is a charge for people to get information about the operations of 2,900 government bodies.
The government says that they did a consultation of those 2,900 public bodies covered by this legislation. They’ve called it deep consultation, good consultation, or whatever the language was. Then on the Engage B.C. website, over 75 organizations participated. So 2,900 public bodies are covered by this legislation, 75 organizations participated, 1,700 individual responses to govTogetherBC and 800 individual responses to the Ipsos survey.
I think what’s important to acknowledge is that there were two key themes that were canvassed in that. One was service modernization and the other was privacy enhancement. Nowhere was there a conversation about transparency. In fact, the people and the organizations that have reached out to us were shocked that this legislation came forward, based on the fact that there wasn’t a detailed conversation or request for information on transparency.
[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]
I think it’s important to also acknowledge the impact that the removal of data residency, data sovereignty, could have for British Columbians. I think that it’s safe to say that for the data that we create in here, we take every effort to store it here in this country.
Why? Why do we do that? We do it because then our laws apply to it.
I think that before government and before the backbenchers and the members of the NDP caucus stand up to unanimously support this, they need to carefully consider and think about whether or not they’ve asked enough British Columbians if this matters to them, whether or not the 75 organizations, the 1,700 individuals, is a fair representation of British Columbians. Because I can tell you the committee work would have been a much better way of being able to gauge, over a much longer period of time, in a much more detailed and thorough way, whether or not British Columbians are okay with this change.
So here we are in August. Government’s proposed it. I would imagine British Columbians wouldn’t…. I can imagine some British Columbians are going to be confused, because some of them might be getting ready to make comments about this to a committee. Now they’ve found out that, well, that process isn’t going to be available to them. Or it could be available to them, but what’s the point? Now the government’s just changed it. Now the comments will have to be: “Well, we need to change it back.” It’s just sloppy and uncoordinated.
If the government wanted to or needed to make changes because of timing — which was one of the arguments, that there are aspects of this under a ministerial order that need to be changed because the ministerial order is going to be expiring soon — fine, fair enough. Extend the ministerial order. Expedite the process of the committee. Ask the committee to focus on that part of it because there’s a time sensitivity to it.
Don’t make the change and then use some excuse that, well, we needed to rush this through in the fall session, prior to asking these questions and getting detailed responses from the public through the regular committee process, which has been a regular process in 2010, 2016, 2021. Now it’s going to be a conversation as to whether or not those need to be removed.
The final thing I want to talk about today is going to be around section 27 of the legislation. This is one that I think also…. I ask my colleagues on the government side of the House to really take a look at exactly what the minister and the ministry is asking them to approve here, with the power to authorize a public body to disregard a request.
I’ve asked some questions about this, but I’m very, very concerned that the expansion of this power…. The commissioner already can authorize a public body to disregard a request, but what this legislation is doing is expanding the scope under which that commissioner may consider that request.
I’m not going to get into a bunch of examples of what those requests might be, but what I will do is invite my colleagues to think about that themselves, to consider all of the different requests that might come to just disregard a request in this freedom of information.
I think what we need to be leaning much more towards is that recommendation that my colleague from the Cowichan Valley was talking about, and that was making public information proactively publicly available, rather than expanding the scope by which a commissioner may allow a public body to just disregard a request and then leaving it up to the commissioner to determine whether it’s frivolous or vexatious.
There is already some of this authority, but what this government has done in this legislation, without consultation, without the discussion that would normally happen in a committee, is say: “Okay, we’re just going to expand those powers.”
To me, like my colleague has mentioned previously earlier today, I have very serious concerns about what is being proposed here. I have very serious concerns about the timing of when it’s being proposed, especially in the context of the fact that I and other members of this Legislature are part of a committee that should be doing work exactly on these topics, asking these questions, finding out the advice of the people of this province so that then we can create recommendations that inform the minister so that the minister can draft legislation that reflects the wishes of the public.
That’s a quality-functioning democracy, not the backwards approach that’s happening here. Appoint a committee. Appoint it again. Meet to appoint a Chair and a Deputy Chair. Then bring major amending legislation in, in the middle of that process. Right in the middle of that process. We have until June 22 of 2022 to bring those recommendations back.
Not only do you undermine the work of that committee, but you undermine the confidence of people that their government is functioning in a way that makes sense, because none of that process makes any sense at all. What it does is, it indicates that the component parts of this government are simply not communicating very well with each other. That’s just embarrassing, really.
With that, Mr. Speaker, I thank you for the opportunity to speak to Bill 22. We’ve got a lot of questions coming in the committee stage of this debate. With that, I’ll take my seat.
T. Wat: I’m honoured to stand up today and speak on Bill 22. But at the same time, I feel really sad. I’m so disappointed in this socialist government that introduced this bill to trample upon democracy.
We are in a critical time in British Columbian history. The challenges of COVID are still all around us. Our businesses continue to struggle to keep their doors open while this government struggles to get vital grants and supports out the door. People and British Columbians are anxiously awaiting vital COVID data and supports from government to keep their families safe.
There are countless issues that this government could address right now in these crucial weeks of the fall session. My colleague who spoke earlier has suggested that they call her landmark equal pay bill so that we can help finally move the dial on this important issue for women in this province. But unfortunately, what has this government decided is the most pressing matter for them at this moment? What have they decided to table? A bill to strip away even more transparency and accountability. A bill that is designed to make it more costly and more difficult for media, for opposition and for all MLAs to access government documents and information that is there and our inherent right to.
The state of FOI has already been an issue of great concern under this government’s administration. British Columbians, media and members of the opposition are currently waiting for months, sometimes even years, for documents requested through FOI. And let’s not forget when the government wrote themselves a blank cheque in the supply bill from last spring, with no accountability on how the money was to be spent.
Over the last 20 months, we have seen government distort and withhold vital COVID data from the public throughout the pandemic, much to the concern and dismay of British Columbians trying to keep their workplaces, their homes and their families safe. The Premier keeps dismissing questions from the opposition, from us and other groups about his government withholding critical data related to the management of COVID-19. Just last month, the government finally admitted it’s been keeping two sets of numbers on how many COVID patients are in hospital. One for the public and the real number. That real number is 46 percent higher. That’s quite a difference.
This legislation was government’s opportunity to address their many past failures in transparency and accountability. Instead, we are seeing a bill that not only fails to address many of the inherent faults with this government and their release of public information, but it seems to be a step in the wrong direction.
Noting the hour, I would like to reserve my right to continue my comments tomorrow and move adjournment of the debate.
T. Wat moved adjournment of debate.
Motion approved.
Hon. L. Beare moved adjournment of the House.
Motion approved.
Mr. Speaker: This House stands adjourned until 1:30 p.m. tomorrow.
The House adjourned at 6:26 p.m.