A need to know

Province needs to strengthen how FOIPOP requests are handled

Premier Stephen McNeil went on record last week to say he believes the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner (OIPC) for Nova Scotia receives an adequate budget.

In fact, in response to multiple questions from multiple journalists in the province, the premier made it clear he has no concerns about how Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy (FOIPOP) requests are handled in this province. We feel differently.

For the uninitiated, these requests are an option afforded to any citizen (not just journalists) who feel they aren’t getting the full story from their elected officials or local public bodies, including hospitals, universities, colleges and school boards.

To quote directly from the OIPC website: “All public bodies, municipalities and local public bodies are obliged to adopt a policy of accountability, openness and transparency and to provide a right of access to information with limited exemptions. They are also obliged to ensure the protection of individuals’ personal privacy.”

Once a request is submitted the public body has 30 days to respond.

That sounds reasonable, right? Actually, this is where things start to get murky.

In some cases, requests are fulfilled within the expected time frame. In other cases, the public body will respond simply to advise the applicant that they will require an extension of up to 90 days. In many cases – either after the initial 30 days or after the 90-day extension – a response will come back to inform the applicant that the requested information is not available because it is confidential, sensitive or related too closely to personal information.

At this point, an applicant has a few options: abandon the request, revise the request or apply for the OIPC to review the request and grounds for refusal.

A revision resets the clock on the 30-day window for response and can easily turn into a vicious cycle.

A review is an even more tedious process. There is currently at least a 12 to 18-month backlog in having a review dealt with in our province. In some instances, individual cases can take years to resolve. When a review is complete, the OIPC has the authority to make a recommendation but it does not have any authority to force release of information.

In other words, even if the OIPC’s independent review of a request results in a determination that the information should be released, the onus still relies on the public body (who wished not to release said information) to do so.

There’s also a cost associated with FOIPOP requests. It used to be $25 to submit a request, but that was reduced to $5 by Darrell Dexter’s NDP government. In addition to the initial fee, applicants are on the hook for the cost of completing the request and that can run into the hundreds or even thousands of dollars, depending on the amount of resources required.

Add to all this the fact that there’s little consistency in how various public bodies in Nova Scotia respond to FOIPOP requests. Some are known to handle them promptly and at minimal cost to the applicant, while others are notorious for dragging out the process, redacting large amounts of information and/or attaching large costs to fulfilling the request.

In our experience, it takes months to get information, if you get any at all. And while our requests for review patiently wait in a queue for their turn, decision makers proceed as per normal. And, as mentioned above, even after all that effort is expensed, there’s no process in place to ensure the release of any information at all.

So, while FOIPOP legislation exists to ensure that relevant information is not withheld from citizens, the reality is it’s much more complicated than that.

Nova Scotia was leading the way when it became the first province in Canada to enact a Freedom of Information Act in 1977. It’s time we trailblaze once more.

Not only should Nova Scotia strengthen funding of the OIPC in order that their staff can complete reviews in a more efficient manner, but it should also afford the commissioner the right to force the release of information that it deems appropriate and fair through its investigations.

In today’s fast-paced and technology-driven world, there is no excuse for not having a more expedient way to administer FOIPOP requests.