B.C. hires ex-privacy commissioner for review of FOI problems

An ex-privacy commissioner will receive up to $50,000 including expenses to help the Liberal government respond to a current privacy commissioner’s report on violations of the freedom of information law.

The government hired David Loukidelis, a former deputy attorney general, after Elizabeth Denham uncovered evidence that Premier Christy Clark's political staff abused the law by destroying records, conducting negligent searches for records, failing to keep proper records or dragging its feet on the release of records.

Citizens’ Services Minister Amrik Virk said Loukidelis will begin his work immediately and wrap up by Dec. 15.

“I commit and government commits to make the findings of his report public,” he said.

Virk said government needs a former commissioner to help it respond to a current commissioner because Denham’s report touched several different areas — “operational, management, technical, legislative.”

He said the government needed someone to provide a “broad scope of advice” and to provide an “outside expert opinion on how best to action” Denham’s recommendations.

“Understandably, there are different interpreta- tions of what defines record, what defines transitory,” he said. “And Mr. Loukidelis will break this down, will provide us with his report and then we’re going to learn from that report and we’re committed to act on his recommendations.”

NDP critic Doug Routley accused the government of undermining an independent officer of the B.C. legislature by getting a second opinion on Denham’s report.

He compared it to the government’s recent decision to bypass representative for children and youth Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond in favour of hiring a former deputy minister, Bob Plecas, to review the Ministry of Children and Family Development.

“Will Mr. Loukidelis’s recommendations then be reviewed by a previous privacy commissioner?” Routley said. “It’s not helpful and it doesn’t get us any further to the goal of having actual transparent government.”

Routley said he has no confidence that the government will act on Loukidelis’s or Denham’s findings.

“They’ve consistently ignored rulings by successive commissioners,” he said. “What they have done is develop an ever-moresophisticated way of avoiding transparency by stretching, beyond the breaking point, the principles and regulations within the act. So I expect they’ll just follow the same pattern.”