Access in the Academy, developed by the Freedom of Information and Privacy Association and Mike Larsen of Kwantlen Polytechnic University (Instructor, Dept. of Criminology), and generously funded by the Law Foundation of British Columbia, is a brand new educational resource that provides a unique and practical look at how researchers, students, and others in the […]

An example letter for making a provincial Freedom of Information Request (in British Columbia). Download

An example letter for making a federal Access to Information Request. Download

FIPA continues to fight for freedom of expression by appealing the Supreme Court of BC’s decision in the Provincial Election Act case.   Download release  

Supreme Court of Canada decision on the use of the section 13 ‘policy advice’ exemption in Ontario’s FIPPA, widens ‘black hole’ for government information.   Download release

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 […]

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

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 […]