BC’s Freedom of Information Changes will Disproportionately Impact Student Journalism

The BC NDP is trying to place a $25 fee on Freedom of Information requests (FOIs), something that would challenge the public’s ability to access information at Capilano University (CapU).

At the end of October, Lisa Beare, the minister for citizen services, proposed several changes to the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA) — the legislation that allows journalists to receive information from public institutions that they won’t release of their own accord. This includes email correspondence, internal documents, data and much more.

Some of these changes have the potential to increase accountability in BC — new penalties for those who deliberately get rid of requested information, for starters. However, the proposed change that upsets the Courier staff, and other journalists, is the $25 fee to file an FOI.

One thing we’ve always loved about the Courier is our ability to write pieces that are important to you, and that affect all of your experiences. Stories like the birth alerts court case and net neutrality may never have been written without our ability to place FOI requests.

Our job as journalists is to help you hold CapU accountable. If this new FOI request fee gets implemented, that makes our ability to access this information harder — $25 per FOI can add up quickly. How can we help hold CapU and other government bodies accountable if we don’t know what they’re doing?

Implementing a $25 fee — one which would be four to five times higher than the fee in most other provinces, at that — means that it’s easier for bodies like the government and CapU to be less transparent with the public. At a time when the public’s faith in institutions is wavering, we think it’s strange that the government would attempt to make themselves less accountable — don’t you?