Review of 'broken' freedom-of-information system to finally get underway in P.E.I.
Wait for information has gone from months to years, critics say, harming public interest
Toby MacDonald has spent the past six years trying to gather all the information she can on what led to multiple asbestos breaches at her daughter's Summerside high school, Three Oaks Senior High, during renovations in 2017.
Those renovations were conducted while students were still attending classes. Families were not initially notified.
In a recent video posted to social media, MacDonald laid out dozens of pages on the floor, from a response to one of her many freedom of information requests, in an effort to show much information had been redacted — that is, removed from the documents by the P.E.I. government before being released.
"All those squares?" she says in the video, referring to white boxes with black outlines, indicating where information has been severed. "That's information that is being withheld from parents."
MacDonald has reached a conclusion after her years-long quest for answers. Calling freedom of information on P.E.I. "our last line of defence for transparency and accountability" in a private message to CBC News, she described the system in one word: "Broken."
Skepticism about ability to prompt change
On Friday, MLAs on P.E.I.'s standing committee on health and wellness will begin discussions on a review of the province's Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.
Under law, that review is required to get underway sometime in 2024, meaning the committee is getting started just in time. But one member of the committee already worries the review may not have the scope or depth to lead to whatever changes are required.
Back in March, Green MLA Peter Bevan-Baker managed to convince MLAs from all parties to vote in favour of creating a special committee that could devote more time to the task.
But that idea became snagged on a technicality. While MLAs voted for Bevan-Baker's amendment, the Progressive Conservative government never called back the actual motion he amended for a final vote.
That means the province's health committee will be juggling freedom of information matters, among all its other responsibilities.
"And so we end up with a situation where the busiest committee in the house is now tasked with dealing with a hugely important piece of legislation," Bevan-Baker said Thursday, suggesting the committee will struggle to deal with its mandate covering health care, housing, social development and justice issues while delivering the review.
"If you look at what I would call the deterioration of the ability of citizens to get information about their government — which is sort of a fundamental principle of any democratic society — things have really gone downhill," he said of freedom of information in the province.
How the NHL numbers were obtained
As one example, he pointed to the province's contract with the NHL. Tourism Minister Zack Bell tabled a copy of the deal that the Liberals had actually obtained through an access request. In both cases the dollar amounts were redacted.
Another standing committee used its subpoena power to compel Bell to table an unredacted copy of the contract.
Without the ability to issue a subpoena, members of the public would have to ask P.E.I.'s privacy commissioner to conduct a review if they felt the government was withholding information it was required by law to release.
Those appeals are taking years to complete. MacDonald said she has one underway dating from 2019.
CBC News has 11 reviews in progress with the privacy commissioner's office. The oldest is from a freedom of information request made in 2018.
In October, reacting to a question about an ongoing review, the commissioner's office advised CBC News that it is dealing with "an overwhelming number of reviews awaiting deliberation and [an] increasing complexity of issues" in conducting them.
In its annual report for 2023 — released just last week — the privacy commissioner's office said provincial officials told it more than 500 access requests had been filed that year, and nearly one in 10 resulted in a request for a review from the commissioner.
Doiron told CBC News last week that her office had recently added a fourth staff member to handle the workload and would soon add a fifth.
"The office of the commissioner is under-resourced. Government knows it and uses it to its advantage," Paul MacNeill, publisher of Island Press, told CBC News via email.
He said access requests which used to take months now take years.
"This is not in the public interest."
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