The province’s privacy watchdog has released a report slamming the former B.C. Liberal government for routinely dropping the ball with freedom of information requests (FOI).
The Information and Privacy Commissioner (OIPC) reviewed 194 random FOI requests from April 2015 to March 2017.
Acting Commissioner Drew MacArthur said they saw consistently poor compliance rates and an increase in the length of time it takes to process a request.
“Without that timely access, people don’t know what’s going on, their democratic rights aren’t being fulfilled.”
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According to the report, the average of days a file was overdue jumped from 47 days to 62 since 2014.
“It is egregious. The Freedom of Information Protection and Privacy Act is a fundamental underpinning of democratic rights,” said MacArthur.
The report also found time extension requests went up by 75 per cent.
“I don’t think that that increase in 75 per cent is related to the complexity of files I think it’s related to the priority they associate with providing the information to the public.”
MacArthur said that in some years, one in four requests did not get a response.
He added that if a resident broke the law as often, the government would have a problem with it.
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