B.C.’s minister for citizens’ services has invited members of the public to offer their views on our provincial freedom-of-information and privacy legislation. I’m happy to oblige.
The legislation as it stands is frequently ambiguous, occasionally unintelligible, and an invitation to a game of hide and seek.
By the latter, I mean it enables various public bodies to withhold information that by any reasonable standard should be made available.
I’ve written before about some of the more inexplicable examples, but I will review a couple. Some years ago, a young student at the University of B.C. tried to take her life.
She was admitted to hospital, treated and released. But although numerous caregivers at the hospital, and senior officials at the university, knew what had happened, no one contacted the student’s mother.
She learned the facts only when her daughter attempted suicide a second time and, sadly, succeeded. The excuse given was the need to protect the young woman’s privacy.
An even more confounding example occurred in Victoria a few years ago. A middle-aged man committed suicide at his residence, and left a note explaining his decision.
The man’s distraught father asked to see the note, hoping it would shed some light on what had happened to his son. His request was refused, on grounds of privacy.
What possible harm could be caused by giving the dead man’s father access to the note? For heaven’s sake, why would you leave a suicide note if you didn’t mean it to be read?
It has become common practice for public agencies such as health authorities or government ministries to withhold the names of employees dismissed for cause. The justification invariably given is the need to preserve “privacy.”
But what right to privacy does an employee possess who has committed a breach of duty sufficient to get fired? There is a valid public interest in knowing this person’s identity, particularly on the part of future employers who are entitled to know who they might be hiring.
In a variant of this hide-and-seek routine, we have Nanaimo city council refusing to say why its two top managers — the chief administrator and the chief financial officer — have gone on leave.
I’m guessing both managers have had enough of the continuing farce in Nanaimo’s council chambers. There has been name-calling, a lawsuit against the mayor by his colleagues (since dropped on grounds of cost) and a general air of chaos.
Yet these are public employees whose role is essential to the performance of the city’s administration. Local taxpayers have a right to know what’s going on, not every detail perhaps, but a general sense. Municipalities, like other public bodies, are supposed to be transparent. If privacy legislation is used to cover their incompetence, or worse, we all suffer.
Here is the nub of the problem. The commissioner has the authority to investigate spurious claims of privacy, but uses it only rarely. That creates an incentive, both for politicians and bureaucrats, to hide their dirty linen.
My advice to the minister is simple. Ask the commissioner to spell out in plain language the rules that govern legitimate claims of privacy.
Demand also a list of specific instances in which a claim of privacy would not be valid. (Previous commissioners, to be fair, have asked the legislature to clean up the existing muddle, and gone unheard.) And, if need be, rewrite the statutes to introduce greater clarity.
It’s widely believed that B.C. has the most dysfunctional and obstructive privacy legislation in the country. The NDP loosed this monstrosity on the public sector. It’s only appropriate that an NDP minister now straighten out the mess her party created.