Congratulations to BC Freedom of Information and Privacy Protection Commissioner Elizabeth Denham, who has taken up a similar job in the United Kingdom.

Denham has been an excellent commissioner here, although, under her leadership, the office was stronger on the personal privacy side than on making governments turn over information through FOI.

There had been rumours Denham would have been reappointed for another six year term here. The CTF disagrees with such reappointments. As we wrote a few years ago:

In fact, no independent officer of the legislature should ever be re-appointed.

Legislative officers must be, first and foremost, independent. Any re-appointment process undermines that independence.

When re-appointment is an option, nearing the end of their first six-year term some independent officers begin to wonder whether the government will reappoint them. They may ease up on the government to help their cause — human nature dictates the difficulty of biting the hand that feeds us. This undermines the office and puts taxpayers at risk. The last thing we want is an officer trying to get a government to renew his or her contract…

If the public is serious about protecting the independence of the auditor general, ombudsperson, information and privacy commissioner, conflict of interest commissioner, merit commissioner, police complaint commissioner and representative for children and youth, we should push government to extend their terms to a more reasonable eight years and forbid reappointment under any circumstance.

Congrats, Ms. Denham. We wish you well – and we hope your replacement here gets tough on government agencies desperate to keep information out of the hands of the taxpayers who should have access to it.