The following was sent to the B.C. Information and Privacy Commissioner on Friday, asking for reconsideration of a new rule that would reveal FOI requests and requesters BEFORE the response has been provided by government.

Commissioner,

On behalf of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, I would like to register our organization’s strenuous objection to the Minister of Finance’s plan to publicly post FOI requesters’ names before the request is fulfilled. 

As an advocacy organization that files hundreds of FOI and ATIP requests a year across the country, transparency is important to us. We critique government spending and hold the government to account; FOI is a key way of learning what the government is doing and why. We rely on these FOIs to help us bring to light what government would prefer to bury.

By posting our requests before the material is provided, we will have to move faster on requests, which can cause mistakes and confusion. This is bad for government and taxpayers. When there’s a race to publish items, mistakes get made.

Further, it opens the government up to complaints that material may be hidden from certain requesters. If a document is inadvertently not given to a certain reporter, it will appear as though they are purposefully hiding it from them. This puts the document holders in a difficult spot and will cause further distrust between the government and the taxpayers who pay for these records.

We believe the requester should be disclosed – when the material is posted to the government’s website 72 hours after the material is provided to the requester. This is fair and fits with the principles of transparency and accountability.

We also request full consultation with our group and other stakeholders before such a policy is brought in.

To be clear, we fully support the comments and concerns raised by Stanley Tromp, BC FIPA and others.

Jordan Bateman
B.C. Director, Canadian Taxpayers Federation
http://www.taxpayer.com 
604-510-5535
http://www.twitter.com/jordanbateman