SOME PROPOSALS HINDER PRIVACY RIGHTS By Ian Mulgrew Vancouver Sun June 7, 2011 The Conservative government’s omnibus “tough-on-crime” legislation should be redubbed “tough-on-civil-liberties” if it embraces all the last Parliament’s law-and-order leftovers. … Aside from concerns over the radical change to the country’s approach to crime-and-punishment, some of the proposals run roughshod over privacy rights […]

FOI WATCHDOG SAYS WRIST SLAP OPENS THE DOOR TO ABUSE BC’s Information and Privacy Commissioner has found BC Ferries’ FOI policy operates in a way that ‘frustrates the purposes of the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act’, but has declined to do anything concrete about it. After being put back under the Act […]

TIME TO STOP LITIGATING AND START POSTING ROUTINELY, SAYS FIPA FIPA has won another important victory in forcing the provincial government to release contracts it makes with the private sector. In a decision handed down yesterday, the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner ordered the government to hand over most of the remaining parts […]

Canada Health Infoway’s plans for highly-centralized electronic health records (EHR) systems within each province containing patient records that can be shared nationwide may not be feasible, a chorus of experts says. That “shared record” model which Infoway has adopted was in large part discredited and discarded in the United Kingdom, note the critics, who say […]

Liberal Party of Canada’s response to BC FIPA, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, and Newspapers Canada’s question regarding their position on ATI reform. A Liberal government will:   • Post all Access to Information requests, responses, and response times online at accesstoinformation.gc.ca;   • Immediately restore the long-form census;   • Make as many government datasets […]

Jack Layton’s response on behalf of the NDP to FIPA, CTF, and Newspapers Canada question regarding the party’s position on access to information reform. New Democrats are committed to improve the Access to Information system through a variety of measures that include increasing the powers of the Information Commissioner, speeding up the processing time of […]

PLAN “LESS ABOUT WHAT GOVERNMENT IS DOING WITH ITS OWN DATA THAN WHAT IT’S DOING WITH CITIZENS’ DATA,” B.C. CIVIL LIBERTIES ASSOCIATION SAYS With the unwieldy title of “Citizens @ The Centre: B.C. Government 2.0 – A transformation and technology strategy for the B.C. Public Service,” the document starts out okay. Defining principles have phrases […]

What has FIPA been up to since last year? Read it all in our Annual Report for 2010 (pdf).

The federal Access to Information system is in chaos, but the parties seeking office have said nothing about what they will do to fix it. FIPA, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and Newspapers Canada have sent a joint letter to to the party leaders asking them what they will do to combat an already a disastrous […]

Information and Privacy Commissioner Elizabeth Denham has announced that her office has been examining the PRIME police database, following a complaint about PRIME to BC’s Solicitor General by the BC Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA). BCCLA’s complaint states: “The B.C. Civil Liberties Association has discovered that as many as 85% of British Columbia’s adult population have […]

In this issue: ‘Open Government’ trend is heating up – Will there be light as well as heat? FIPA to Parliamentary committee: avoid ‘open government’ models that reduce citizens’ information rights Commissioner investigates so-called “Proactive Disclosure” policies BC Government goes to court again to contest release of full IBM contract FIPA welcomes new Minister for […]

RELEASING THE FULL $300 MILLION IBM CONTRACT WOULD END A SEVEN-YEAR LEGAL BATTLE AND BE A REAL DEMONSTRATION OF OPENNESS, SAYS FIPA Vancouver – BC’s new Minister for Open Government can take a big step toward real openness by routinely posting its multi-million dollar outsourcing contracts online, says the BC Freedom of Information and Privacy […]