BC’s Information Commissioner launches an inquiry into police chief associations.
Information and Privacy Commissioner Elizabeth Denham has launched an inquiry into British Columbia’s two police chief associations. Denham is considering recommending to government that the BC Association of Chiefs of Police (BCACP) and the BC Association of Municipal Chiefs of Police (BCAMCP) should be declared governmental “public bodies” and be made subject to the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA). According to her December 6 “letter to stakeholders,” the Commissioner is also inviting public input about this possible recommendation until February 14, 2014.
The Office of the Information and Privacy Commissoner (OIPC) evidently has some of the same concerns about the associations that Focus has been reporting on for two years, as it’s become clear that these secretive associations have been doing everything from crafting the government’s policing legislation to ordering police media spokespersons around the province to promote the virtues of mass surveillance. “In my reflections on this issue to date,” Denham’s two-page letter states, “it appears that the policy argument in favour of such a recommendation is based on two related considerations.” Denham describes “the important public role that the Chief Constables and the Associations play in our society,” while “government and others treat the Associations as the focal point for contact with the Chief Constables on matters of public policy.” However, she points out, “the appropriate level of transparency of Association records can be achieved for FIPPA purposes only if a member of the public can request current and historical records from the Association itself, rather than relying on what might be piecemeal and incomplete records held by individual Chief Constables at any given time.”
What prompted this action? “We had inquiries, we had letters, we had calls, and we examined the implications of [freedom of information] and its application to these associations in some mediation files,” said Denham in an interview with Focus. “So we’ve had interest in the question. We’ve had evidence presented to us in relation to this question.”