The Town of Gander did not respond appropriately to an access to information request and was deemed to be uncooperative by the province’s Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner.
According to the findings of a Jan. 15 report from the Commissioner’s office, an unknown applicant submitted an access to information request July 12, 2018, seeking all correspondence sent and received from one of the town councillors.
Mayor Percy Farwell would not disclose the councillor singled out, as he did not want to create speculation that could be potentially damaging to said councillor or potentially draw lines to an applicant.
“You don’t want speculation and rumour leading people to their own conclusions,” he said.
While extensions were granted, the Commissioner’s office, ultimately determined, the Town of Gander refused to cooperate during the investigation.
And Farwell isn’t disputing the claims in the report.
“Our organization has not responded appropriately to this request,” he said.
Farwell noted he wasn’t aware the application was even filed until Dec. 10, when he was contacted by the commissioner’s office.
He said the town has complied with approximately 80 information requests in the past, and this was the first one it hasn’t been able to fulfill on time.
“We are not defying the legislation, we respect the legislation,” he said. But, “some requests are extremely onerous.”
He wouldn’t go into detail about what caused the delay, again stating it could potentially lead to identifying the complainant, however, the request appears to have been a large undertaking for staff.
Farwell said there were thousands of files to vet, as the personal information of others included in emails must be protected.
“You don’t want to violate anyone else’s right to privacy,” he said.
According to the report, “The complainant submitted two access requests within a short period in July 2018, which resulted in identifying approximately 8,000 responsive records. The particular request relating to the named councillor’s emails resulted in over 3,500 responsive records.”
Sean Murray, director of Research and Quality Assurance for the Commissioner’s office, said the lack of communication brought about the report’s findings.
“There was certainly a passage of over a month from our office trying to receive some sort of response from them regarding the complaint,” he said. “Initially, they said there were confused about the two access requests by the applicant. It might have held water, but there was still a period of delays and unanswered inquiries from our office afterwards.
“Whatever value that excuse may have had was sort of undermined by the fact that they never really got their act together even after we sorted that out.”
Recommendations
As a result, recommendations have been made by the commissioner for the town to review and adhere to the act, provide the information coordinator and backup coordinator with training on a timely response process, implement internal deadlines, consider the releases of records when requests involve a large volume of records and time extensions.
Furthermore, it is recommended full and open communication with the Commissioner’s office take place, and there be timely responses to notification letters happen within the legislated time periods.
While Farwell couldn’t commit to the recommendations until talking it through with the rest of council, he is in agreement.
“The recommendations are quite reasonable, and quite helpful, in terms of us as an organization,” he said. “Assuming we accept it and implement it, it will help us avoid this type of situation from happening again.”
The town now has until Feb. 1 to meet the new deadline for the information request, and Farwell said work is underway to fulfill the request on time.
