Police gear up for changes to access, privacy laws
The provincial government announced amendments to Saskatchewan’s access and privacy legislation which are scheduled to take effect in the new year.
The Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Amendment Act, 2017 (FOIPP) and The Local Authority Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Amendment Act, 2017 (LAFOIPP) will both come into force on Jan. 1, 2018.
They include the extension of LAFOIPP to include police services.
Jo Baumgartner, executive director of the Regina Police Service, said they have been preparing for the changes for the past year and said it mostly just formalizes a process they already have in place.
“Nobody had the right to ask for information on someone else in the past and they won’t now unless there’s a specific exemption for that. So that doesn’t really change,” Baumgartner said.
But she said it will change the way the information is provided.
Typically, when a person requests their own information, RPS would provide a summary of the incident report in question. Now, they will be required to submit the report.
The documents will go through an intense vetting process. Details that aren’t related to the person, or would interfere with an investigation — among other exceptions — will be redacted.
“It’s really just about the duty to protect people’s personal information and the duty to allow access to information where there is no reason ... for us to not provide that access,” she said.
Other than personal information, members of the public may request corporate or aggregate information.
RPS has spent the last year educating all staff on the amendments, reviewing and revising policies to come in line with the legislation, creating forms to make it easier to make requests and establishing a process to respond to requests within legislated time frames.
Some of the other amendments include a duty for government institutions and local authorities to assist applicants in obtaining information and a duty to protect personal information, extension of the privacy requirements under FOIPP to MLA and cabinet ministers’ offices, increasing the penalties for offences and the creation of a new offence for snooping by an employee of a government institution or local authority.
The amendments adopt a majority of the recommendations in the Information and Privacy Commissioner’s 2014-15 annual report, according to a Government of Saskatchewan news release.
It is a move Justice Minister and Attorney General Don Morgan says will “modernize access and privacy in Saskatchewan” and ensure the province is “consistent with other Canadian jurisdictions.”