PART FOUR: FILING A REQUEST FOR INFORMATION:
Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries File # 292-30/AFF-03-004
Office of Information and Privacy Commissioner file: OIPC file# 17606.

On February 6, 2003, CKNW’s Bill Good Show, for whom I was working freelance, submitted a request for information to the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries. The MAFF originally estimated a total fee of $1937.50 for the records. On March 3rd 2003 we requested a fee waiver on the grounds that these records were in the public interest. The Ministry agreed there was some public interest and subsequently subtracted $870 from the original estimate, leaving $1,067.50 outstanding.

We aimed to reduce those fees further. I was CKNW’s point person for negotiations through the Freedom of Information and Privacy Commissioner’s Office and clerk Celia Francis was assigned to us. Peter Smith of the Ministry of Transportation acted for the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries. Arguments were sustained and complex. The question we aimed to answer with the requested records was: What is the nature of the special relationship between the BC SPCA and the provincial government? We hoped fulfillment of our request would help protect the public interest and benefit the public that supports the SPCA through provincial and municipal tax dollars, donations and volunteerism.

In its April 9, 2003 letter in response to The Bill Good Show’s request for a fee waiver, the MAFF said:

1) “There is some public interest in the underlying issue regarding the SPCA.” 2) “However the records held by MAFF could only provide a partial picture and access to them alone would therefore not serve the public interest to the fullest extent.” And, 3) “Also, processing this request would result in a large impact on MAFF resources.”

The Bill Good Show responded on April 30, 2003 with the arguments below: (in italics to be understood as direct quotes from that submission).

1 a) The MAFF is the custodian of public records which are by definition entirely of public interest since the public – not the ministry or bureaucracy – entirely pays for and owns them.

b) Beyond that, the public through contacting media and complaining to the MAFF has shown active interest in knowing more about the relationship between it and the SPCA. The MAFF’s response has been to obfuscate and sidestep, which has increased, not diminished, the interest in the relationship between the two.

c) The Liberal government, when in opposition at the time the PCA Act was debated in the legislature, shared many of the same concerns the public has brought to The Bill Good Show’s attention. Hansard from April 13, 1994 has Mike de Jong on the record saying:

“I object to granting any organization a legislative monopoly unless there are truly compelling reasons to do so. It is not good for taxpayers to have no choice, and it is not good for the best-intentioned organizations to have no competition or possibility of competition in the future. I am thinking specifically about many municipalities who have animal control bylaws and pound facilities. Every two or three years these matters are put out to tender. Does this bill mean that when a municipality put it out to tender, two contracts will be let to police the animals within the municipality? I don’t think that’s right.”

Langley Township councilors, whose animal control contract is up for renewal at the end of June, are on the record in the April 16th Langley Times. Councilor Kim Richter accused the SPCA of playing games and said, “There is a lot of discontent in the community with the SPCA.” Councilor Penny Kirkpatrick said, “I don’t think we have to have a song and dance to get them to the table” and added that council “should not be serenading the SPCA.” Langley Township staff, after the SPCA had cancelled a meeting in which it was to present its position, said, “staff have been unable to understand the SPCA’s position.”

Mike de Jong also said in the legislature: “It’s a very strange kind of privatization: giving police powers to a private organization. If the subjects were people rather than animals, it would be like turning the justice system over the B.C. Civil Liberties Association. To have a say in the policies adopted, you would have to buy a membership.” He asked whether this was “just another downloading of costs on local government” and “what is riper for empire-building than a legislated monopoly? And he wanted to know, “What is wrong with local convenience and local accountability to taxpayers?”

Clearly, the then-opposition/now-government was/is aware that the public has an interest that would/will not be protected by the “very strange” relationship between the Province and the SPCA. Mike de Jong concluded by saying, “The intent of the bill may have some good in it, and there is a definite need to address. But I fear the minister has been offered a quick fix, a superficially appealing solution which contains many hidden pitfalls and unforeseen consequences.” The day of pitfalls and consequences has clearly arrived, but the MAFF, in its correspondence to individuals who have complained, has made it equally clear that it is unwilling to admit to or remedy that.

2 a) With all respect to the MAFF, government routinely provides only a “partial picture” of any story. It is the job of media, in this case The Bill Good Show, to balance coverage of any story with documentation and interviews from various sources of information. The Bill Good Show has a firm grasp of the obvious and does not require advice from government about how to cover issues. We have already done considerable work based on over a hundred sources and thousands of pages of SPCA documents, which resulted in six programs during the past year and a bit. Those programs included interviews with six animal welfare advocates, seven SPCA spokespersons, two union representatives, our freelancer/analyst, as well as dozens of callers to the open-line. Government knows the work our show has done since it is cited in the Chilliwack Times saying it monitors media reports about the SPCA. Indeed, it is only government’s information that is missing from this story, which is the nut of the problem and the reason for the request. We suspect the government also knows that.

b) The comment “access to them alone” seems disingenuous since the government that gives the SPCA special status through its own Act also lets it keep almost all of its important and relevant operational, governance, and other information private from its partners, members, donors, and taxpayers. And the government knows the relatively informed public is dissatisfied, as Mike de Jong was, with this situation.

c) Because the SPCA or anyone else refuses to willingly provide particular relevant information to the donating and volunteering public is NOT reasonable justification for the MAFF to classify its information as having less public value.

3 a) The MAFF provides $70,000 annually to the SPCA for training Special Constables. The Solicitor General’s Ministry provided more than $1 million in gaming money to the Society last year. Accordingly, the fiscal argument to not waive the fee holds no water. If government can afford to fund its controversial relationship with the SPCA it most certainly can afford a one-time outlay of resources to tell the public the full nature, depth, scope and tone of that special and strange relationship. Two thousand dollars to inform the public is a fraction of the funding government has given the SPCA during the years or in comparison to what the government spends on advertising its policies to the public. The Province and the MAFF have responsibility to provide the public with reasonable access to its government/public records since it, alone, holds them and since it exists solely for and because of the public interest.

b) Clearly, most members of the public would find the estimated charges for this search onerous. (Indeed, even the Bill Good Show does since it very rarely files FOI requests and so does not budget for such fees.) The FOI process will not work to protect the public if the cost of accessing the service is more than most of the members of the public can afford. The Bill Good Show has invested many, many more hours and resources in research and production than the ministry estimates it would to fulfill our request. We have done our duty to inform the public and protect its interest at NO cost to the taxpayers or individuals since advertisers pay for our service; now it is time for government to fulfill its duty and inform the public for NO ADDITIONAL cost to taxpayers, of which CKNW is one.

A July 22nd 2003 letter from the Commissioner’s Office Celia Francis urged us to narrow our request by removing the public’s complaints, which would be laborious for the ministry to produce, in order to reduce the fees for the records. We had previously made the arguments below in our April 30, 2003 submission to Ms. Francis.

Narrowing the request: It was members of the public who brought the Society’s legal status, their concerns about and knowledge of it to us. It was members of the public who wanted to tell what they know and to learn what they do not know.

Our animal welfare sources, which include SPCA members, have informed us and we have informed the general public about the SPCA and its legal – indeed special -- status. What we have been unable to do is inform people about the details of the relationship between the SPCA and the Province. Both seem very reluctant to provide reasonable access to information of that nature.

Narrowing the request would make absolutely no sense given the MAFF’s assertion that its information could provide only a “partial picture.” Narrowing the request within the context set by the ministry would further reduce its part of the picture and would, according to its logic, further diminish The Bill Good Show’s ability to “serve the public interest to the fullest extent.” That is obviously not the idea or in the interests of public service and freedom of information.