As British Columbians prepare to vote in the provincial election on October 19, they may first want to consider the value of open government, and then ask themselves which candidates would best protect and enhance this right.
Our freedom of information (FOI) law ensures that you have the legal right to see official records on health and education, or crime and the environment, or official spending and public safety. You paid for the production of these records with your tax dollars, and these were presumably created for your benefit.
FOI is also a topic that transcends political parties and ideologies. No party in B.C.—neither the current ruling one nor the opposition—has a proud record on this democratic right, and all have broken their electoral promises on FOI law reform over the past two decades. Time and again, parties vociferously plead for FOI rights while in opposition, and then thwart them after gaining power.
To demonstrate the law’s value, I posted an updated version of my 2020 database of 2,000 news stories. These are summaries of media articles that were produced from records that journalists and citizens had obtained by using the B.C. Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.
Between January 1, 2021 and September 15, 2024, there were 334 FOI news stories. The largest number of 114 were written by Bob Mackin for his Breaker website and other outlets, and I posted 85 outstanding samples at this website. These indices were created to help build public support for urgently needed law reforms, and provide a morale boost and story ideas for journalism students. Samples include:
- After TransLink executives announced in 2021 they would all take a 10-per-cent pay cut, they later used government emergency COVID money to quietly reverse those cuts.
- Two years after FIFA named BC Place Stadium one of 16 North American sites of the 2026 World Cup, costing taxpayers nearly $600 million, BC Pavilion Corp. finally revealed the contract to the media.
- The heat dome that scorched B.C. in June 2021 has been linked to the deaths of 650,000 farm animals.
- Animal traps set for wildlife were responsible for injuring or killing at least 173 cats or dogs over a five-year period in Canada.
- Workers on the Vancouver Oakridge construction site reported multiple near-misses involving cranes in the months before a fatal incident killed a worker.
- Problems with fire alarms and sprinkler systems in Vancouver's downtown single-room occupancy (SRO) buildings typically take nearly three months to get fixed. Hundreds of people were displaced last year because of fires in SRO buildings.
- The company operating one of the Washington state cancer clinics under contract by the B.C. government must refund millions of dollars to thousands of overcharged low-income patients.
- Victoria police officers used their vehicles to intentionally hit people on bikes, scooters or on foot at least 12 times in the last decade.
Before voting, we need to be made aware of the FOI rights we risk losing. The system is under siege on many fronts, starting with the three black holes of oral government, an overly broad policy advice exemption and government-owned yet FOI-exempt companies.
New obstacles are added yearly, such as the Vancouver fire department now charging the public $260 to view a single-page fire investigation report, which the current FOI law strangely permits it to do, with no right of appeal.
Then came Bill 22 in 2021, the most bold and reckless assault on the public’s right to know ever seen in B.C.: A cynical betrayal of the fine legacy of NDP premier Mike Harcourt, who passed the FOI law in 1992.
Bill 22’s most harmful feature was a section permitting public bodies to charge applicants a fee to requests records, now set at $10. This was imposed despite strong protests, some from self-described NDP supporters who vowed in response never to vote for the party again.
In January 2023, a report by B.C.’s information commissioner found that in the first six months after the levy began, the number of media FOI requests had dropped by a startling 80 per cent from the same period a year prior. Yet this fee could be repealed today by cabinet order, a move that would be very popular with voters.
All of this is coupled with devastating cutbacks to the traditional news media. Against all these long odds, good FOI journalism is still somehow being produced. Yet if our FOI law and practices were reformed up to accepted world standards, then the list of articles above could easily have been twice as long.
Candidates should explain exactly how they will improve your FOI accountability rights, if they wish to earn your vote. The power of the ballot is yours.
Stanley Tromp is a graduate of the Langara journalism program and the author of the book Fallen Behind, on world FOI laws. His student society FOI website is www.canadafoi.ca/studentfoi.
