The BCCLA and BC FIPA have sent a joint letter to the Information and Privacy Commissioner for BC regarding media reports that the office of the commissioner will be investigating ICBC’S proposed use of its photo database for the purposes of identifying suspects in the recent Stanley Cup riots. In our view, it is arguable […]

FIPA has created a website called “Health Information Privacy in British Columbia” to fill a serious lack of information available to the public about their health privacy rights as the province moves toward a universal system of government- controlled electronic health records. British Columbia has launched a multi-million dollar program to create an electronic health […]

More than 30.000 people and organizations have signed an online petition against the federal government’s plan to sneak in internet spy legislation as part of its omnibus crime bill. FIPA is a member of the STOP ONLINE SPYING campaign and encourages all its members and supporters to sign the petition which is available at http://www.stopspying.ca/ […]

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 […]