David Loukidelis described what he called “an unacceptable pattern of government-wide failure to respond to access requests in as timely a fashion as it should.”

Former Freedom of Information Commisioner David
Loukidelis resigns as BC governments Deputy Attorney General

The BC government today announced that Deputy Attorney General David Loukidelis will be leaving the government.  Loukidelis became the Deputy AG in January 2010 following a position as the Commissioner of the Freedom of Information Office.

A brief story in the Vancouver Sun this afternoon noted:
The announcement was made in an internal note sent Friday by John Dyble, deputy minister to Premier Christy Clark.

It’s in his role as the Freedom of Information Commissioner that David Loukidelis made news that many have likely forgotten.

For example someone made a request under the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act to the Royal B.C. Museum for a copy of the draft report, Loukidelis had to beg the government for more money to argue the case in court.

Writer Bill Tieleman, in a Strategic Thoughts piece from May 2004 asked:
What kind of independence does the Freedom of Information Commissioner have when he has to beg the Finance Committee for line item approval for specific investigations and legal opinions? The Campbell government has reduced an independent officer of the legislature to little more than a minor bureaucrat in one of many government ministries.

In another story, this one from Keith Reynolds in Policy Notes he said:

… the Commissioner’s Office faced funding cuts under both NDP and Liberal governments.  Under-staffing has meant getting decisions can take years. Bad interpretations of the legislation whittled away at clauses that should have guaranteed access to government information.  Liberal amendments increased timelines and the burden on applicants.  Whole new areas were declared out of bounds while BC Ferries was reorganized as a private organization and out of reach of FOI.

Despite this, Loukidelis faced the Campbell government down on a number of issues.  His opposition was largely responsible for stopping amendments that would have moved the government’s privatization schemes completely out of reach of FOI.  His determined criticism forced major changes to the privacy of BC medical information handed over to private American companies to manage.  He ruled that former Deputy Premier Ken Dobell had breached the rules respecting lobbying.  He also initiated a change in procedures that cuts months out of the FOI process when public bodies just refused to acknowledge or answer requests (deemed refusal).

And a story from the Vancouver Sun in February 2009 quoted B.C.’s Information and Privacy Commissioner as ‘criticizing the provincial government for what he calls its failure to tackle the chronic problem of delay in responding to freedom of information requests.’

It went on to say that in his first annual report on FOI performance, David Loukidelis described what he called “an unacceptable pattern of government-wide failure to respond to access requests in as timely a fashion as it should.”

Again, as mentioned, he took up his post as Deputy Attorney General in 2010, leading to a story by Vaughn Palmer that began by saying:

For 10 years David Loukidelis has served with distinction as the province’s independent commissioner on information and privacy, the watchdog on the government’s openness and transparency.

He was, as the record will show, no pushover. Typical was his blast at the BC Liberals on the eve of the last election, accusing them of a “government-wide failure to respond to access requests in as timely a fashion as it should.”

Systemic underfunding. Cumbersome processing of requests. Inadequate record-keeping. A “disturbingly” obvious pattern of delay in responding to filings from the news media.

Palmer ended his piece by stating the obvious:

Ironically, when the new commissioner goes up against the government in the future, he or she could be facing a legal strategy shaped, in part, by the new deputy attorney-general, David Loukidelis. At a time when his services as commissioner were needed more than ever, the watchdog has been domesticated.

Given the positions he took against the government, as the Commissioner of the Freedom of Information Office, one would have to wonder how he was able to work with the government as Deputy Attorney General for as long as he did.

Something tells me we will never know that part of the story.

I’m Alan Forseth in Kamloops, with the thoughts of one conservative.