B.C. alleges Nanaimo councillor distributed private records

B.C.’s Attorney General Ministry has gone to B.C. Supreme Court to force a Nanaimo councillor and three citizens to return confidential documents to the city, remove them from the internet and to destroy any copies.

Coun. Gord Fuller and Matthew O’Donnell (also known as Matt Hensock), Tim McGrath, and Terry Lee Wagar are named by the province in the case. Allegations against them have not been proven in court.

The matter centres on the distribution of two sets of documents.

One is a March 2015 email written by Mayor Bill McKay for the Integrity Group, a human resources consulting firm, hired to improve working relationships between council members and staff, the government’s petition states.

“The email was intended to be confidential, and contained sensitive personal information about third-parties, as well as the mayor’s personal opinions about members of Nanaimo city council.”

During a November 2016 council meeting, McGrath and Robert Fuller, Coun. Fuller’s brother, distributed copies of the email to council and the public, the petition states.

“Nanaimo city staff have been unable to confirm with certainty how Tim McGrath and Robert Fuller obtained copies of the email.”

That email was published on Facebook groups by Coun. Fuller, McGrath and Wagar, the petition said.

The City of Nanaimo sent notices to the three to demand copies of the email be destroyed and Facebook posts deleted, it said.

The second set of documents refers to two December 2015 letters from the law firm Ramsay Lampman Rhodes on behalf of Coun. Diane Brennan to the mayor and to the city’s chief administrative officer, it said.

“The letters identified concerns related to how various personnel matters had been addressed by Nanaimo city council,” the petition said.

“The letters contained personal information that was sent to Nanaimo’s chief administrators in circumstances that were impressed with confidentiality.”

Copies of the letters were posted on Facebook and on Nanaimo websites, the petition said.

In May 19, 2016, Wagar posted one letter to a Facebook group called Nanaimo Politics, and one as a comment to a post by Coun. Fuller on the Facebook group Gord Fuller Municipally A(musing), it said. Wagar also posted a letter to a Facebook group called Nanaimo Political Talk and to a website, it said.

On the same day, McGrath posted one of the letters to a Facebook group called Nanaimo Politics. He also posted a letter as a comment to a post by Fuller on the Municipally A(musing) page, but that post was later deleted, the petition said.

On Sept. 28, 2017, O’Donnell posted one of the letters to Nanaimo Political Talk and to a website, and on Aug. 15, he put up links to that post on the Facebook groups A Better Nanaimo and Nanaimo Talk, the province alleges.

The City of Nanaimo had contacted all four people seeking to have them destroy copies of the letters and delete any posts, the petition said.

On Aug. 2, the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for B.C. wrote a public letter stating its view that posting the email and letters resulted in breaches of the Information and Protection of Privacy Act.

Despite the letter from the privacy commissioner’s office and despite the efforts of the city, “The respondents have refused or ignored Nanaimo’s demands that the email and letters be removed from Facebook and destroyed,” the petition said.

On Aug. 3, Nanaimo city hall official Sheila Gurrie asked the Attorney General Ministry to initiate a petition to obtain the orders needed to uphold the privacy act and to prevent more dissemination of the email and letters, the court document said.

Coun. Fuller said in a Monday email, “I have never denied posting the RLR [legal] letters. They were e-mailed to me without anything in the e-mails or letters stating they were confidential. As for these and the Integrity letter [email] by the Mayor, nasty comments about most on council, they have all been in the public domain for over 2 years.”

Fuller also said, “Nanaimo has been leaking information like a sieve and I have to wonder just how diligently the OIPC has investigated these leaks.”

O’Donnell said he was “incredibly surprised” by the government’s petition because when he published the lawyer’s letter, it had already been in the public domain for more than a year.

He said he had nothing to do with the original leak. The letter highlighted concerns about the hiring process of the city’s former chief administrative officer, he said.

“The public does have a right to understand how that process went.”

O’Donnell said: “Even if I were to delete the information, it is still out there in the public realm.”

He said he plans to represent himself, because he has no money. “That’s my only option but I’m not going to back down either.”

The other two respondents were not available for comment on Monday.