Vancouver Coastal Health has won the 2024 "Code of Silence Award for Outstanding Achievement in Government Secrecy" from the Canadian Association of Journalists for routinely breaking access to information laws during COVID-19.
“Freedom of information laws cannot be treated by public authorities with contempt, especially during times of crisis,” CAJ president Brent Jolly said.
“The pandemic laid bare the dependent relationship between quality information and public trust in institutions. As was the case with many other institutions, VCH is a leading example of how years of government neglect towards freedom-of-information practices lead, when put under pressure, to the entire structure folding in on itself like a house of cards.”
The awards are presented annually by the CAJ, the Centre for Free Expression at Toronto Metropolitan University and the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression ().
The awards highlight government or public funded agencies that obstruct the public's right to information under access laws.
The groups said 小蓝视频’s Information and Privacy Commissioner Michael Harvey, in a , found multiple examples of how VCH failed to meet the province’s standards.
“For example, the audit found only a quarter of public requests met the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act’s (FIPPA) 30-day response benchmark,” the groups said.
“This resulted in the agency sometimes extending the time limit without a valid reason or the agency applying an extension to respond even after the original time limit to respond had already passed.”
Harvey said VCH during the COVID-19 pandemic and, in turn, jeopardized the public’s trust in the health-care system.
About one-third of the time, for information was received, the groups said.
In his report, Harvey acknowledged that while VCH was under unprecedented pressure during the pandemic, the audit also pointed to other more systemic problems. These included:
• following a 2021 amendment to FIPPA; VCH, like other public bodies, decided to charge a $10 FOI application fee for general access requests. VCH administered this fee by only accepting payment by cheque or money order, unnecessarily exacerbating the barrier to access. The agency later changed this approach;
• VCH has a policy for routinely releasing certain records without the need for an FOI request, also known as proactive disclosure. However, contrary to this policy, there were instances where VCH processed requests for these records as an FOI request and charged the application fee, rather than pointing applicants to where the records were already publicly available. Further, some records that were already public were difficult to find online; and,
• VCH was particularly unresponsive to the media during this period. The average number of days it took to respond to FOI requests from the media was 116 days, peaking at 171 days in 2021/2022.
Upon completion of the audit, Harvey made eight recommendations to improve VCH’s compliance with 小蓝视频’s FIPPA rules. Those recommendations included expediting communication with individuals seeking information, and strengthening policies around records management.
of the award for charging exorbitantly high fees for access to a fire investigation report already paid for by taxpayers.
