The B.C. government has replaced its independent watchdog for information and privacy, six days after hiring away the commissioner as a deputy minister and leaving the work of the office in a legal vacuum.
But the opposition New Democrats say the delay speaks volumes about the government's disregard for the role of the watchdog.
"Pick your poison, it was either contempt for freedom of information and its role in democracy, or it's incompetence," said NDP critic Doug Routley. "Or both."
Last Tuesday, David Loukidelis hand-delivered to the Speaker of the Legislature his resignation as head of the Office of Information and Privacy Commissioner.
Two days later, the commission's second-in-command, Mary Carlson, went to the premier's office to warn that the office had been effectively immobilized without a commissioner.
When she received no answer, she turned next to Speaker Bill Barisoff. Her letter to him, delivered late on Friday afternoon, was also made public.
"The clear advice of legal counsel to this office is that we have no legal authority to act in any manner," she wrote on Friday.
Mr. Barisoff said in an interview he had no idea the resulting vacancy effectively shut down the commissioner's office until he read media reports about Ms. Carlson's letter on the weekend.
But when the government did respond to her concerns Monday afternoon, they overlooked her for the job.
Instead, Paul Fraser, B.C.'s Conflict of Interest Commissioner, is taking over as acting commissioner.
Mr. Barisoff said Ms. Carlson's letter didn't make it to him on Friday because it was sent after business hours. However he downplayed the delay, saying the government needed time to find the right candidate.
"You have to have someone who can do the job and you can't simply take someone out of nowhere," he said. "I don't think it's that long to wait for someone to do a good job… The world wasn't coming to an end in three business days."
He added that Mr. Fraser is a good choice for the interim position, since he is already an independent officer of the legislature. The permanent commissioner won't be selected until the legislature resumes its next sitting in the spring.
Mr. Loukidelis, who takes up his duties as deputy Attorney General next week, left behind a backlog of 200 cases appealing government decisions. As well, the office is involved in several legal challenges, investigations and reports on government activities. One of those investigations is looking into a privacy breach involving the files of 1,400 social assistance clients.
Darrell Evans, executive director of the BC Freedom of Information and Privacy Association, said the government's lapse undermines the work of the commission.
"This is one of the key government watchdogs, there is nothing more fundamental to democracy than ensuring the public has some chance of finding out the truth," he said.
He's also concerned in particular about the future of a review Mr. Loukidelis left mid-stream.
The former commissioner had promised to look into the government's plans to expand the sharing of personal information within government as an efficiency measure.
"We have to ask, from a broader policy perspective, whether government's increasing appetite for sharing our personal information creates new and unacceptable privacy risks," Mr. Loukidelis wrote in a recent report, where he promised to review the shift.
Mr. Evans said the file-sharing plan amounts to an "information grab resulting in a huge dossier on each citizen."
Mr. Loukidelis could not be reached for comment.
Justine Hunter