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The SPFA Campaign has officially joined BC Freedom of Information and Privacy Association’s Transparency Matters Campaign working to ensure Bill-22 doesn’t come in provisional law, following a meeting with BC FIPA Executive Director Jason Woywada and President Mike Larsen earlier this afternoon.
Bill-22’s regressive changes to BC’s already broken FOI system that would prohibit student journalists across the province from accessing government records.
Bill-22 would fundamentally distort BC’s media landscape, creating an imbalance of the journalistic capabilities of small outlets, including regional/community, high school and post secondary, and ethnic and cultural newspapers, disproportionately disadvantaging them compared to corporate/commercial media. It would amplify existing socioeconomic barriers and concentrate access to information to a smaller, wealthier, and less diverse segment of British Columbians.
The amendments create a chilling affect that would deter citizens, journalists, activists, and others who use the freedom of information process from submitting requests regarding BC’s most pressing issues of public interest and concern.
The Information and Privacy Commissioner has stated that he is “unable to understand how this amendment improves accountability and transparency when it comes to public bodies that operate in a free and democratic society.”, an obvious nod to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and referencing the quasi-constitutionality of the access to information issue.
The SPFA Campaign is putting its full weight behind BC FIPA’s Bill-22 Transparency Matters Coalition, and is activity engaging with its press freedom partners, as well as its supporting public in effort to prevent British Columbia from becoming legislatively secretive and illusive province by virtue of the Bill’s passage.
