If The Trees Fall In Mr. Leyne's Forest, Will Anybody Hear?

SomeThingsActuallyMatter
IntrinsicallyVille


After running through three demonstrative examples where it appears to be clear that specific government documents existed when responses to FOI requests told the opposition that they did not, Mr. Leyne of the Victoria Times Colonist wrote the following:

...The working theory from the NDP is that government has adopted the widespread practice of claiming important records don’t exist. “No records” is the new “no comment.”

But that’s not exactly news. A national survey a year ago turned up a similar conclusion. And FOI law is a background issue that doesn’t really move too many people.

What’s also in play is the NDP’s penchant for getting (BC Liberal Minister Amrit) Virk up on his feet during question period...


Gosh.

That sounds an awful lot like column writing by polling in which things that really do matter are subsequently waved away with the 'it's just raw politics, anyway' coup de grace.

Both of which got reader Merv Adey righteously ticked.

So much so that he sent the following letter to the VTC's editor:

...Re "NDP Eager to put Virk on Hot Seat", your columnist does journalism no favors when he minimizes the revelations brought forward by the NDP in the Legislature Monday April 20th.

As he notes, the NDP sought information from multiple sources within government, notably from a gentleman named Nick Facey who worked for Amrik Virk during the height of the scandal around Kwantlen College executive compensation. I dryly note Virk was forced to admit he had "forgotten" that he was involved in efforts to skirt the compensation rules when he was a board member at Kwantlen.

So the NDP asked for emails from Facey during that time. "No Records" was the response. But the emails did turn up, largely blacked out as cabinet advice, from the Minister's files. There are other examples from Hansard that day.

Leyne claims that the FOI issue doesn't move many people, and governments across the country , what, routinely lie to FOI requesters? I'm not sure I understood him. But if I were to assert that our Press Gallery is content to fill the newspaper pages with gossip from the golf course, rather than digging for factual information, and that the Press Gallery found this nonsense acceptable from gvernments, people would be mighty upset.

The Freedom of Information and Privacy Act protects our democratic institutions by forcing governments to inform us of what they are up to. It's a damn shame Leyne doesn't find a government routinely evading the act more appalling...


No word yet on whether or not Mr. Adey's letter has been published by said editor.


_______
To give non-partisanish 'weight' to the serial government obfuscations that have effectively hidden important information from the public about how their government is run, independent MLA Vicki Huntington chimed in as well.
And, of course, the crashing trees that Mr. Leyne decided not to mention in his column? Well, if he'd told his readers about things like that they just might come to the crazy conclusion that the BC Liberal government does, in fact, have a track record of making sure the public doesn't find out what it's really up to....Crashing trees like, say,  the ancient douglas fir known around these here parts as the 'Dobell Doctrine'  that was later bookended by the third growth hemlock called the  'Dyble (non) Investigation'....


.