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 […]

FIPA will be in court next week seeking to force the government to stop suppressing freedom of expression during provincial elections. Our Charter challenge gets under way in BC Supreme Court in Victoria on Monday November 4, seeking to strike down the provisions that require everyone to register with Elections BC before undertaking ‘election advertising’ […]

BC FIPA, today, submitted a letter to the Ministry of Community, Sport and Cultural Development in the context of its consultation on local government election reform. BC FIPA strongly opposes provisions on third party spending limits and believes the lack of a minimum spending threshold in the provisions makes them unconstitutional violations of freedom of […]

After four weeks of heated campaigning, the 2013 provincial election is finally over. The voters of B.C. have chosen a new Liberal majority government under Christy Clark to lead the province for the next four years. The coming weeks will see a new cabinet appointed, staff shuffled and (at least the possibility of) new faces […]

To this point in the provincial election campaign, the leaders of the four major parties have been quite reticent to reveal where they stand on some of the burning issues in the field of information rights. That’s why we sent all four parties a questionnaire pushing them for clear positions on how they would stop […]

The provincial election campaign is well underway and all the major parties have released their platforms. But unfortunately for those of us concerned about information and privacy rights, the pickings are awfully slim. Information issues were smoking hot right up to the drop of the writ. But ever since, they’ve received hardly a mention. Looks […]

A few short days from now, the writ will drop on the 2013 provincial election, kicking off twenty-eight days of heated campaigning. And while there’s no shortage of issues for voters to consider, recent controversies around government secrecy and attempts to undermine Freedom of Information make it clear that information policy should be a top […]

The B.C. Government’s stubborn refusal to fix our province’s unconstitutional Election Act has forced a Charter challenge by the B.C. Freedom of Information and Privacy Association (FIPA). The definition of election advertising contained in s.228 of the Act is extremely broad, and captures any communication with the public that “…promotes or opposes, directly or indirectly, […]

At FIPA, we’re in the process of winding down a very busy and eventful 2012. The past twelve months have been marked by major victories, as well as new challenges on the transparency and information rights front. We’re very pleased to have finally succeeded in our efforts to obtain an unredacted copy of the B.C. […]

FIPA is calling on Premier Christy Clark to call back the Legislature to amend election legislation the BC Court of Appeal has just declared unconstitutional. The government made a number of changes to the Election Act during the spring sitting, and then referred those changes to the Court of Appeal for an opinion on their […]

There has been a lot of discouraging news on the FOI and privacy front recently as a raft of new legislation introduced in the last couple of weeks undercuts the law protecting our FOI and privacy rights. All four bills have been criticized by provincial Information and Privacy Commissioner Elizabeth Denham in an unprecedented barrage […]

In today’s Vancouver Sun, FIPA’s Executive Director Vincent Gogolek teams up with Michael Vonn of the BCCLA and Shannon Daub of the CCPA to push back against the BC Government’s election advertising ‘gag law.’ Meant to keep big money advertising out of election campaigns, the law misses the mark, and ends up crushing small spenders […]