Province urged to make municipal finances public
Privacy commissioner's request follows taxpayers group complaint
The provincial privacy commissioner has formally advised that the Saskatchewan Ministry of Government Relations should be publishing the financial documents it receives annually from municipal counterparts for public access.
Asked to review an $11,850 fee estimate for a freedom of information request from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF), Information and Privacy Commissioner Ronald Kruzeniski concluded in his recommendations that the ministry should lower its fee but also be posting such records openly.
Offering a larger recommendation, he also said the question would be best absolved by the province “making financial statements and auditor's reports it receives from municipalities available to the public.”
“This could include publishing such records on Government Relation's website so the public may access such records,” he wrote in the April report.
Saskatchewan did maintain an online database of municipalities' financial records in the early 2000s, though it has not been updated since 2008.
In 2019, then-minister of Government Relations Lori Carr said a new web portal reviving the practice was to launch by 2021. No such resource has appeared, though the ministry said in 2023 it was “reviewing options” on how to use the legacy database “going forward.”
CTF launched it's own database last year, but says that municipalities' inability to provide such reports meant the taxpayer lobby group has used freedom of information requests to obtain the records it posts publicly, often at a “costly” sum.
An investigation from the Leader-post and Star-phoenix also found this can be a difficult ask for small municipalities to comply with due to constraints like staffing, internet access or records' existence.
Redacted communication from government staff in this case, included in Kruzeniski's report, suggests a solution to lower the fee would be to “contact municipalities directly for this information.”
CTF advised that it had done so, and only 35 per cent of municipalities were able to provide the files requested.
Kruzeniski says a fee estimate is to be “proportionate to the work required” for an institution to respond efficiently to an applicant's request.
“A fee estimate is equitable when it is fair and even-handed, that is when it supports the principle that applicants should bear a reasonable portion of the cost of producing the information they are seeking, but not costs arising from administrative inefficiencies or poor records management practices,” he said.
Kruzeniski ultimately recommended Government Relations lower its fee to $10,830, as he found the $1,020 estimate quoted for search time to retrieve the reports was unreasonable, as government had already retrieved the files, but the $10,890 estimate for preparation was reasonable.
Preparation costs apply, as the rules of the freedom of information process requires each page be reviewed for potential personal information, regardless of whether the document is public.
A recommendation formally issued by the commissioner comes with a 30-day deadline for the organization in question to become compliant, though Saskatchewan's commissioner does not have legislated power to enforce the ruling.