`Transition Team' not so chatty anymore
With dismantling of park board on horizon, records of group's text messages `no longer in existence'
AVancouver politician working for the elimination of the city's elected park board is not answering questions about the apparent destruction of digital records about the process.
After portions of Vancouver park board commissioner Marie-Claire Howard's group text chat became public in December through unusual circumstances, Postmedia News filed a freedom-of-information request for the rest of the exchange.
But that request has yielded zero records. The city says the messages are “no longer in existence.”
Howard won't say why or how the group chat messages — which appears to have been related to the park board's dissolution — vanished.
The disappearance of government records and the politician's refusal to discuss the matter has left transparency advocates, predictably, unimpressed.
Vancouver park board's first public meeting after Mayor Ken Sim announced his plan to dismantle the elected body. was on Dec. 11. During that packed and tense meeting, the screen of Howard's cellphone was photographed by former commissioner Sarah Blyth-Gerszak, who was observing the meeting from the gallery.
The photos, which Blyth-Gerszak posted online, appeared to show Howard participating in a group message called transition team, after the mayor had announced he would create a transition group to oversee eliminating the independent board and bringing its operations under council's control.
Postmedia News filed a request through the city's freedom-of-information, or FOI, office, seeking the “transition team” message history from Howard's phone. In February, the city replied it found “no responsive records” in its possession.
“Based upon its investigations, the city understands that the requested records do not relate to the business of the city,” the city's response said. “In any event, records were not retained and were no longer in existence at the time your request was received.”
Postmedia asked how the city's FOI office could ascertain the records did not relate to city business, if the records did not exist when the request was made.
In response, Cobi Falconer, director of the city's FOI office, wrote that her office “received written confirmation from Commissioner Howard and all purported recipients of the message (within the city and the park board) that the records do not relate to city business and that the records cannot be retrieved.”
Howard has declined to discuss the matter in recent weeks, instead sending a brief email saying that photographing a person's phone without the owner's consent is an illegal breach of privacy.
“The photograph taken of my personal phone was not related to city business and is not subject to access by the City of Vancouver or through FOI,” said Howard, who is affiliated with ABC Vancouver, the civic party of the mayor and most of city council.
It would be understandable if Howard feels that having her phone's screen photographed over her shoulder was an invasion of privacy.
But Howard is not a private citizen. Under B.C. law, the public is entitled to expect that politicians' communications regarding government business can — with certain exceptions — be made public.
The way the public learned about this group message — through Blyth-Gerszak's surreptitious photography — is certainly unusual. But once its existence was public knowledge, the disappearance of the messages raises questions.
Who participated in the group chat? What was discussed, and when? Why were the messages deleted?
Howard has declined to answer those questions, and others, asked by Postmedia through email.
Howard's contention that the chats were not city business seems difficult to understand, considering the public photos show messages about park board meetings, votes, and motions. One message also conveyed comments purportedly coming from Gary Pooni, a prominent local business person and ABC Vancouver supporter.
Whether someone supports abolishing Vancouver's elected park board or preserving it, the proposal — which the provincial government has committed to supporting — represents the largest change in recent memory to the city's governance. And Howard's thoughts on the subject are a matter of public interest: In late January, she was officially announced as a member of the park board transition team.
Even if there was absolutely nothing inappropriate in that group message, destroying records and refusing to discuss them “creates the spectre of scandal” even where there might be no problem, said Jason Woywada, executive director of the B.C. Freedom of Information and Privacy Association.
“It is reasonable to expect” that Howard's “Transition Team” chats “would and could relate to city business,” Woywada said. “Regardless of assurances otherwise, the records `may' pertain to the business of the public body. In a functioning FOI system where decision-makers are acting appropriately to document their decisions, (city FOI officials) would review and make the determination of whether or not they pertain to city business.”
Howard's email to Postmedia mentioned that the photo of the messages showed her personal phone.
That does not really matter, said Duff Conacher, of the Ottawa-based civic organization Democracy Watch.
“If you are using a personal device ... and you're doing government business on it, then you've created government records that are subject to freedom-of-information law,” he said. “Any other interpretation of the law would just leave it open to creating government records which can be kept secret, which would just violate the entire purpose of the law.”
This newspaper is not suggesting anything inappropriate occurred in that “transition team” group chat.
But the public should not be left to wonder about it.