Federal Privacy Commissioner’s Office awards grant to FIPA for ground-breaking research on vehicle telemetry.   Download release

Thanks to funding from the federal Privacy Commissioner’s Contributions Program, FIPA is launching a year-long study to examine the effect of electronic monitoring systems in our vehicles, on our privacy rights and consumer choice. Our vehicles are no longer simple mechanical devices which provide us with transportation, but electronic platforms capable of remarkable feats. This […]

This is the 2013 Annual Report for the Freedom of Information and Privacy Association. The report was released at the Annual General Meeting in April 2014, which was held at the YWCA in downtown Vancouver. You can view the report in your browser or download a copy as a pdf by clicking on the link below. Download […]

In a letter sent today, BC FIPA, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF), and Newspapers Canada are urging Prime Minister Stephen Harper to bring the PMO and Ministers’ offices under the Access to Information Act, after Information Commissioner Suzanne Legault identified three ministerial staff as having interfered with a number of ATI requests. The letter signed […]

In a decision released today, Justice Bruce Cohen of the BC Supreme Court declined to strike down provisions of the BC Elections Act that infringe constitutional guarantees of freedom of expression because he found they were justified in a free and democratic society. FIPA brought the constitutional challenge last year, after attempts to persuade the […]

The Department of Public Works denies the Federal Information Commissioner’s request for an RCMP investigation of ministerial interference in FOI requests.   Download release

We are very pleased to welcome award-winning whistleblower Sylvie Therrien as our guest speaker at FIPA’s 2014 Annual General Meeting. In a culture where roadblocks to freedom of information are becoming all the more common, whistleblowing is an essential part of keeping government transparent and holding decision-makers accountable. Whistleblowers have recently come under threat in […]

What do you do when you want to make sure documents can’t be requested under freedom of information law? Well if you’re the BC Government, you need only utter one magic word: transitory. Government policy states that a transitory record is one that relates to “temporary usefulness […] needed only for a limited period of […]

BC FIPA has weighed in on the side of privacy in the debate over the implementation of the American Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) in this country. In our submission to a consultation by the federal Ministry of Finance on the deal signed last month between Canada and the US, we highlighted the damage […]

Internal e mails FIPA received through freedom of information show that bureaucrats at the BC regulator of financial institutions (FICOM) have privacy concerns regarding the implementation of the US Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) in Canada. Download document

FIPA’s submission to a consultation by the federal Ministry of Finance on the implementation of the American Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) in Canada. We highlighted the damage this would do to privacy rights as Canadians living in the US, and Americans living in Canada could have their financial information identified for sending to […]

The BC government continues to misinterpret the definition of ‘transitory records’ in order to hide from FOI and delete records they don’t want to release. Former Health Minister Margaret MacDiarmid’s e mail regarding the Burnaby Hospital Consultative committee is one such example. Download release