Privacy commissioner sees increase in complaints about denied access
Nova Scotia's information and privacy commissioner is highlighting a growing trend of people complaining more frequently about the failure of public bodies to fully disclose requested information.
"Forty per cent of the appeals filed with our office related to denial of access to records," Catherine Tully writes in her annual report, which was released Wednesday.
People can request information from public bodies in Nova Scotia under freedom-of-information legislation, but if they are unhappy with the response they can ask the commissioner's office to review their case.
In her report, Tully says that key emerging trends also include a failure by government bodies to conduct adequate searches for records and a failure to respond to requests on time.
While 85 per cent of requests to government departments are processed within 30 days, in 11 per cent of cases (247) government departments violated the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act because of delays.
Tully notes the problem is not unique to Nova Scotia and said additional resources and changes to the act could help address the problem.
In the last year, Tully's office dealt with more than 2,600 matters, including reviews and complaints, files initiated by public bodies, outreach and education, and telephone inquiries.
Tully also noted a "distinct difference between acceptance of review report recommendations by government departments versus by other public bodies." Municipalities fully accepted recommendations two thirds of the time, while government departments did so only half of the time, according to the report.
To highlight the issue, Tully points to a recent case where an applicant was only able to get information about fish farms from the Fisheries and Aquaculture Department after the Nova Scotia Supreme Court ordered the records be disclosed, upholding a recommendation Tully already made.
Backlogs still mean it takes an average of more than 400 days to resolve reviews, and in the last year acceptance, both full and partial, of the recommendations of those reviews fell from 81 per cent to 67 per cent.
"The fact that public bodies and municipalities are not required to comply with recommendations is a significant weakness in our access law," the report says. "Currently the burden is on the public to bare the costs of litigation to appeal a public body's decision not to comply with a recommendation."
Laws no longer up to task
The report notes the growing collection of databases that include personal information and the "urgent need to strengthen and clarify the responsibilities for and monitoring of interoperable health information databases to protect the privacy of Nova Scotians' health information."
Nova Scotia's privacy standards fall well short of the new standards set by the European Union's general data protection regulation, which Tully predicts will become the standard expected, particularly when it comes to doing business with the EU.
"Nova Scotians deserve modern access and privacy protections including effective oversight of their rights. Our current laws are no longer up to the task."
As she and her predecessors have done in the past, Tully again calls for order-making power, an idea Premier Stephen McNeil has steadfastly rejected since coming to office in 2013.
Tully says order-making power would motivate public bodies to more actively participate in informal resolutions, an approach she introduced that's proved particularly successful in resolving matters.
"Informal resolution decreases the time to resolve complaints and, of course, improves the resolution of matters to the satisfaction of both parties."
