FIPA Founder Honoured with Grace-Pépin Award at Info Summit

FIPA’s founding Executive Director and former President Darrell Evans was honoured with the Grace-Pepin Access to Information award at Wednesday’s BC Information Summit.

Presented to Mr. Evans by Canada’s Information Commissioner Suzanne Legault and BC Information and Privacy Commissioner Elizabeth Denham, the Grace-Pepin award recognizes Darrell’s life-long commitment to the principles of transparency, accountability and the public’s right to access information.

In the early 1990s, Darrell began a grassroots campaign to advocate for the passage of BC’s first piece of freedom of information and privacy legislation. By 1992, the province had signed into law the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, which is still acknowledged as the best freedom of information law in the country.

Since then, Darrell and FIPA have played a major role in the development and reform of other legislation, including the federal Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, and BC’s Personal Information Protection Act. Darrell is continuing the fight for information rights as the first Executive Director of the Canadian Institute for Information and Privacy Studies.

Not surprisingly, Darrell received a standing ovation from Summit attendees.

FIPA is very honoured to have played host to this much-deserved recognition for our founder. We also wish to thank Commissioners Denham and Legault for making this occasion possible.

Commissioner Legault’s press release on the award can be seen here.