By Vaughn Palmer, Vancouver Sun columnist March 1, 2013
Premier Christy Clark’s staffers appear to be using personal emails as a back channel to avoid coming under access to information scrutiny.
VICTORIA — Among the many damaging revelations about Premier Christy Clark’s government this week was persuasive evidence that her inner circle uses personal emails to escape proper public scrutiny under access to information legislation.
The back channel was on display right there on the covering page of the government’s ethnic outreach strategy, tabled in the legislature this week by the opposition New Democratic Party.
When Clark’s newly departed deputy chief of staff Kim Haakstad circulated the now-notorious strategy to key staffers on Jan. 10, 2012, she did so not from her email address on the official government server, but from a personal gmail account.
Out it went, all 17 detailed, agenda-setting pages, setting down an eight-component plan with specific assignments, accountabilities, and targets. Despite the premier’s effort to downplay it, this was no back-of-the-envelope exercise.
One of the prime recipients was Pamela Martin, director of outreach for the premier and like Haakstad a personal friend of Clark who worked on her successful leadership campaign.
Martin, being employed at taxpayers’ expense in the premier’s office, has an email address on the government server as well.
But any email traffic with Haakstad through that route would be obtainable via a request for access filed under the Freedom of Information and Privacy Act.
Doubtless that is why Haakstad shipped the electronic document to Martin at her personal Shaw email address.
Lorne Mayencourt, director of outreach for the caucus of Liberal MLAs in the legislature and another member of the Clark leadership team, got his copy through me.com.
Also on the gmail service was Barinder Bhullar, the senior outreach coordinator in the premier’s office. And yes, Clark’s top-heavy support group included two directors of outreach and a senior coordinator for same.
David Ritchie, then an aide to a cabinet minister, and Jeff Melland, then a caucus communications officer, were both recipients at their gmail addresses as well.
Brian Bonney, then communications director for multiculturalism, received Haakstad’s personal email missive at his own firm’s address, mainlandcommunications.com.
A seventh designated recipient of this toxic report was Primrose Carson, executive director of the Liberal caucus, whose personal email drop box was at telus.net.
Starting with Haakstad and continuing though the designated recipients, there were eight ports of call on the unofficial communications network established by the premier’s office on this file.
Now it is commonplace for folks in government to communicate personal and partisan political concerns through private email accounts, often running on their own personal computers and hand-held devices.
But in this case the private network was being used to transmit and shape a major public policy, enlisting government resources and public servants in the Ministry of Multiculturalism to reach out to a wide range of ethnic communities.
Yes, Haakstad and her coterie of political appointees intended to bend the strategy (and some of those taxpayer-funded resources) to the benefit of the B.C. Liberal party.
But it was public policy they were making nevertheless. And the essence of the provincial freedom of information legislation is to ensure that the public has reasonable access to the information gathered, shaped and enacted on its behalf.
Records must be kept. Reports should be made public sooner or later. Notes, documents, emails, are all FOI-able, to use the shorthand for requests filed under the legislation.
For all that staffers like Haakstad, Martin et al are working for the greater glory of Christy Clark, they are paid out of the public purse. Their correspondence, memos and strategy papers are no less a part of the public record than their salaries and expense claims.
Thus, their resort to personal email communication on the multicultural strategy was a violation of the spirit of access to information legislation and perhaps the letter of it as well.
It also suggests a plausible explanation for how the Liberals managed to cover their tracks regarding last year’s departure of chief of staff to the premier, Ken Boessenkool.
The review of his conduct in an incident involving a female staffer at a bar in Victoria, which led to his resignation, occupied two weeks and entailed a number of legal and personnel considerations.
Nevertheless, when my colleague Jonathan Fowlie filed an information request for all materials on the handling of the case, he was advised that the entire affair had been conducted without generating a single written word, paper or electronic.
Perhaps his request drew a blank because the sought-after records were relayed through private emails, as happened with those involving the multicultural strategy.
How often do the Liberals conduct public business through back channels to avoid the legal reach of access to information legislation?
Strikes me as a worthy line of inquiry for the watchdog on the legislation, Information and Privacy Commissioner Elizabeth Denham.
As Exhibit A, she could start with that stealth exercise in multicultural policy-making, mounted by the sneaks in Premier Christy Clark’s office.
Original source article: Vaughn Palmer: Christy Clark staffers find a way to conduct public business without public scrutiny
Christy Clark staffers find a way to conduct public business without public scrutiny
By Vaughn Palmer, Vancouver Sun columnist March 1, 2013
Premier Christy Clark’s staffers appear to be using personal emails as a back channel to avoid coming under access to information scrutiny.
VICTORIA — Among the many damaging revelations about Premier Christy Clark’s government this week was persuasive evidence that her inner circle uses personal emails to escape proper public scrutiny under access to information legislation.
The back channel was on display right there on the covering page of the government’s ethnic outreach strategy, tabled in the legislature this week by the opposition New Democratic Party.
When Clark’s newly departed deputy chief of staff Kim Haakstad circulated the now-notorious strategy to key staffers on Jan. 10, 2012, she did so not from her email address on the official government server, but from a personal gmail account.
Out it went, all 17 detailed, agenda-setting pages, setting down an eight-component plan with specific assignments, accountabilities, and targets. Despite the premier’s effort to downplay it, this was no back-of-the-envelope exercise.
One of the prime recipients was Pamela Martin, director of outreach for the premier and like Haakstad a personal friend of Clark who worked on her successful leadership campaign.
Martin, being employed at taxpayers’ expense in the premier’s office, has an email address on the government server as well.
But any email traffic with Haakstad through that route would be obtainable via a request for access filed under the Freedom of Information and Privacy Act.
Doubtless that is why Haakstad shipped the electronic document to Martin at her personal Shaw email address.
Lorne Mayencourt, director of outreach for the caucus of Liberal MLAs in the legislature and another member of the Clark leadership team, got his copy through me.com.
Also on the gmail service was Barinder Bhullar, the senior outreach coordinator in the premier’s office. And yes, Clark’s top-heavy support group included two directors of outreach and a senior coordinator for same.
David Ritchie, then an aide to a cabinet minister, and Jeff Melland, then a caucus communications officer, were both recipients at their gmail addresses as well.
Brian Bonney, then communications director for multiculturalism, received Haakstad’s personal email missive at his own firm’s address, mainlandcommunications.com.
A seventh designated recipient of this toxic report was Primrose Carson, executive director of the Liberal caucus, whose personal email drop box was at telus.net.
Starting with Haakstad and continuing though the designated recipients, there were eight ports of call on the unofficial communications network established by the premier’s office on this file.
Now it is commonplace for folks in government to communicate personal and p
artisan political concerns through private email accounts, often running on their own personal computers and hand-held devices.
But in this case the private network was being used to transmit and shape a major public policy, enlisting government resources and public servants in the Ministry of Multiculturalism to reach out to a wide range of ethnic communities.
Yes, Haakstad and her coterie of political appointees intended to bend the strategy (and some of those taxpayer-funded resources) to the benefit of the B.C. Liberal party.
But it was public policy they were making nevertheless. And the essence of the provincial freedom of information legislation is to ensure that the public has reasonable access to the information gathered, shaped and enacted on its behalf.
Records must be kept. Reports should be made public sooner or later. Notes, documents, emails, are all FOI-able, to use the shorthand for requests filed under the legislation.
For all that staffers like Haakstad, Martin et al are working for the greater glory of Christy Clark, they are paid out of the public purse. Their correspondence, memos and strategy papers are no less a part of the public record than their salaries and expense claims.
Thus, their resort to personal email communication on the multicultural strategy was a violation of the spirit of access to information legislation and perhaps the letter of it as well.
It also suggests a plausible explanation for how the Liberals managed to cover their tracks regarding last year’s departure of chief of staff to the premier, Ken Boessenkool.
The review of his conduct in an incident involving a female staffer at a bar in Victoria, which led to his resignation, occupied two weeks and entailed a number of legal and personnel considerations.
Nevertheless, when my colleague Jonathan Fowlie filed an information request for all materials on the handling of the case, he was advised that the entire affair had been conducted without generating a single written word, paper or electronic.
Perhaps his request drew a blank because the sought-after records were relayed through private emails, as happened with those involving the multicultural strategy.
How often do the Liberals conduct public business through back channels to avoid the legal reach of access to information legislation?
Strikes me as a worthy line of inquiry for the watchdog on the legislation, Information and Privacy Commissioner Elizabeth Denham.
As Exhibit A, she could start with that stealth exercise in multicultural policy-making, mounted by the sneaks in Premier Christy Clark’s office.
Original source article: Vaughn Palmer: Christy Clark staffers find a way to conduct public business without public scrutiny
Christy Clark staffers find a way to conduct public business without public scrutiny