Vaughn Palmer: Freedom of information? Who cares, says the premier of BC

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VICTORIA – Prime Minister John Horgan took refuge on a technicality Thursday when he was questioned about his administration’s proposal to charge a $ 25 application fee for access to information requests.

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“We have not agreed on a fee,” Horgan told reporters. “A fee has not been established and there is no commitment to have a fee in the legislation.”

However, amendments to the Freedom of Information and Privacy Protection Act, introduced this week, would allow the cabinet to impose an application fee. And the cabinet member in charge of the bill, Citizen Services Minister Lisa Beare, has already said she will recommend a fee in the $ 25 range.

Horgan also did not deny that a fee could be imposed after the majority of the NDP enacts the amendments and the chamber is suspended for the year.

“We felt it was important for the cabinet to be able to establish a rate if we thought it would be necessary,” he acknowledged. “There is the possibility of prescribing one, and that will be developed after the approval of the bill.”

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So Horgan’s non-denial doesn’t even amount to “reading my lips, without paying.”

He almost confirmed that one will be in the works, sooner or later and probably sooner.

The prime minister also stated that “no fee will be charged for people seeking information.”

Not so. The only exemption announced to date is for individuals requesting information about themselves.

Individuals seeking non-personal information (from government ministries, health regions, universities, school districts, Crown corporations) will be subject to an application fee.

Incredibly, Horgan insisted that all of this was being done in the “interest of full disclosure.”

However, the New Democrats privately admit that the fee is intended to discourage applications, not promote them.

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Publicly, members of the NDP insist that they do not want to make it difficult for the media to hold the government to account.

“I fully agree with the opposition on the vital nature of freedom of information, particularly for the media in terms of their efforts to do their job on behalf of the public,” Cabinet Minister Nathan Cullen said during the debate on the legislation. this week. .

“They have an incredibly important role to play in public discourse, by holding government to account and ensuring that the extraordinary powers that the government has in its hands are handled responsibly.”

However, Cullen, who is Minister of State for Lands and Natural Resources, also defended the fee as compatible with the NDP’s values ​​of equity and social justice.

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“I think a fee of $ 25, up to and around that range, or just $ 5, seems worth it,” Cullen argued.

“Will you put 5 dollars? If someone is unwilling to pay $ 5, are they sincere in their efforts? “

You may want to pass that opinion beyond your cabinet colleague Murray Rankin, the Minister for Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation.

When the two were serving as NDP deputies in federal parliament, Rankin denounced Ottawa’s $ 5 application fee “as a toll on the public’s right to know.”

“Access to information sounds like a good idea when you’re in Opposition and you can use it as a tool, but when you’re in government, it’s expensive and it’s a hassle,” Rankin added, never thinking about how those words could. be rejected. him when he was on the other side of the government-Opposition divide at the provincial level.

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Rankin also cited government testimony that it would cost the federal bureaucracy $ 55 to collect a $ 5 fee.

Given the forms of government, I expect it to cost Victoria more than $ 25 to collect the application fee proposed by the NDP.

Beare also admitted that the fee was designed in part to discourage a journalist who, according to the government’s estimate, has made too much use of access to information.

“I can confirm that there was only one media applicant who applied, I think there are 397 applications in a single year,” he told reporters. “That’s more than all the other media combined at 328.”

In response to the minister’s focus on a single applicant, Information and Privacy Commissioner Michael McEvoy made two points.

“We can’t make laws about a person,” she told CKNW host Jill Bennett this week.

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McEvoy also noted that under existing legislation, the commissioner has the power to authorize public agencies to ignore requests that are “repetitive, frivolous, or vexatious.”

Privately, the New Democrats say the offending media seeker is Bob Mackin, an investigative journalist and owner of the online site The Breaker.

Mackin, who doesn’t shrink purple, responded in an interview this week with CKNW’s Janet Brown: “John Horgan is taking the ‘democratic’ out of the New Democratic Party.”

In addition to targeting governments in all quarters, Mackin has been known to criticize other journalists, including myself. (Shocking!)

Perhaps the New Democrats expected some news organizations to ignore that part of the story out of a desire to deny Mackin publicity.

But the prime minister’s real attitude is what he expressed in Thursday’s question period, when liberals pressured him to block requests for information about what’s stored on his office computer.

“I mean, be real!” Horgan declared. “Who cares?”

It was one of those moments when the prime minister, freed from the constraints of his mailbox, blurted out what he really thinks: there is no story here.

Believing that, Horgan seems like he intends to use the majority of the NDP to pass the legislation and move forward.

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