Saturday, September 04, 2010

Do You Have To Pay HST On FOI Requests?

WhoSaidIronyWas
DeadVille


Many people in British Columbia have railed against the egregious costs of making a Freedom of Information request to the government of Gordon Campbell these days.

But sometimes, when you plug one leak by putting the cost out of reach for small operators and individual citizens, you open up a whole avalanche when you force people, including people from proMedia outlets, to work together because of ridiculous requests for remittance to do the people's business.

A case in point was the recent release of all thos HST-related documents that went to eight media outlets instead of 'just' the CBC with a rather interesting result.

Paul Willcocks has the details in a footnote to a recent HST post of his own:

...The (HST) documents topped the news reports in all the major media in the province on Thursday, thanks to another government bungle. CBC Radio reporter Jeff Davies submitted the FOI request. The government said it would charge $800 to produce the material. Davies approached seven other news outlets to split the cost and all receive the documents at the same time. The result was an avalanche of bad news....



Ha!

.

6 comments:

West End Bob said...

The title of your post and the last paragraph supplied from Mr. Wilcox's post are High-Larious, RossK!

Thanks for the guffaws . . . .

RossK said...

Me not laughing Bob.

Seriously.

.

North Van's Grumps said...

I was just over at MLA Colin Hansen website and the big announcement over there is "B.C. Eliminates PST".... all seems rather odd, seeing as how the pst still exists, embedded in the HST.

http://www.colinhansenmla.bc.ca/EN/1763/90207?PHPSESSID=945f229ca6c4ee3db05e50f520f02dbd

North Van's Grumps said...

I wonder how much longer this youtube of Colin Hansen talking about when the HST came up on his radar, will be allowed to remain on his website?

http://www.youtube.com/BCGovCaucus#p/u/8/saz5SJYE6B0

kootcoot said...

"I wonder how much longer this youtube of Colin Hansen talking about when the HST came up on his radar"

Colon wasn't lying about the HST not being on their radar. Their radar was aimed at stuff approaching, STUFF sitting on the desk undergoing implementation wouldn't be ON THE RADAR anymore than your own interceptors sitting in the hangar or on the runway are likely to be on YOUR RADAR!

Actually, I didn't realize that governments used "radar," I thought that was more for air traffic control and navigation at sea.

BC liaRs are scum and the smarter rats are starting to jump ship. Thus it should be no surprise that the genius twins, Lake and Krueger are stepping up to defend their fuhrer Herr Campbell, when hardly anyone else will bother.

Anonymous said...

On the topic of the HST being reviewed by MLA Terry Lake, and others, his first comment was to draw upon his life's work as a Veterinarian, and he said:


"“I don’t think Mike Farnworth has done an ovariohysterectomy on an overweight cocker spaniel, as I have,” said Mr. Lake, a veterinarian."

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/british-columbia/rats-tail-a-hairy-omen-on-the-eve-of-historic-hst-meeting/article1699123/

Just for the record for the uninitiated: "Ovariohysterectomy is the medical term for “spaying” the female animal."

Level of difficulty: Although its a commonly performed procedure, it a major abdominal surgery involving a general anesthetic and sterile operating technique but requires the "pet" patient to stay overnight. In other words, the review of the HST by the MLAs could be done overnight, but will probably take at least 90 days to recover from the surgery.