By Dale Bass
Kamloops This Week
A decision by the provincial government to not explain why the B.C. Coroners’ Service is now not releasing the names of deceased people is ludicrous, according to a national expert on freedom of information.
Sean Holman, a journalism teacher at Mount Royal University in Calgary, said the “idea the public has no right to know why they can’t know something is ridiculous.
“This is what you would expect in a communist country or a dictatorship,” Holman said.
Following the retirement of coroners service manager Barb McClintock earlier this year, the service stopped providing the names of deceased who were subject to coroners’ investigations.
In March, the agency announced it was reviewing legislation and regulations to determine how it would proceed with providing information to the public.
Alana McMahen, executive administrative assistant to the office of the chief coroner, said a review should be complete within a month. She said once the review is complete, the office will provide a summary of the new release policy and the legal basis for it.
However, in response to a freedom of information request for the information being gathered that related to the review, Kris Ghag, manager of justice/social team, information access operations, told KTW “the records you requested are withheld in their entirety,” citing policy and legal advice as reasons.
Holman called the two areas cited for reasons “black holes” and said the public “has a right to know what is going on in their communities — and that includes who the deceased are in their communities who the coroners’ service is reviewing.”
He said the office is “using privacy as a shield against transparency,” and suggested the decision may have been influenced by a recent court decision in Alberta that decided “government can say anything is legal advice and it can’t be reviewed by the privacy officers.”
The coroner’s refusal has been appealed by KTW to the information and privacy commissioner in B.C.