Delorey says issues must be weighed in release of documents
Nova Scotia’s health minister says the province’s access to information legislation has to strike a balance between the public’s right to know and the protection of personal information.
Randy Delorey made the comment in an interview Wednesday where the Cape Breton Post asked his position on the newspaper’s efforts to obtain information about the physical condition of the four hospital buildings involved in the planned redevelopment of the health-care system in the Cape Breton Regional Municipality.
“There’s two pieces to that legislation — one is the freedom of information, that is making information available, and the other is protection of privacy,” Delorey said. “There are certain clauses in there when third parties are involved that do require information to be reviewed and assessed before going out to the public.”
Requests regarding the health system often have to go through the formal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy process because of the potential sensitivity of the information involved, Delorey said.
Following the June announcement of the redevelopment, the Cape Breton Post sought from the health authority under routine disclosure the building assessments that had been conducted of the four facilities involved. The documents were referenced by officials taking part in the announcement.
Eventually, the NSHA directed The Post to file a request under FOIPOP to access the documents. The newspaper ultimately was directed to pay $540 to obtain the more than 300 pages of documents from the NSHA, which was paid. Before the documents could be received from the NSHA, a parallel request that had been made by The Post to the Nova Scotia Department of Transportation and Infrastructure Renewal was fulfilled. TIR did not require an additional fee to provide the documents.
The documents contained only information about the physical condition of the buildings involved and very little information was ultimately redacted, only regarding some financial issues. There was no personal information on staff or patients involved in any of the documents.