The province’s Privacy Commissioner has found that the department responsible for The Rooms failed in its duty to assist with an access to information request related to the creation of a controversial position at The Rooms for Carla Foote.
The hiring dominated the House of Assembly for a week and resulted in the Minister for Tourism, Culture, Industry and Innovation being temporarily suspended without pay.
The Department received an access request for “All records related to the creation of the position of Executive Director of Marketing and Development for the Rooms” received October 29, 2018.
However, on the release of the Mitchelmore report in November of 2019, the complainant became aware of additional records that may have existed, but which were not provided.
(Christopher Mitchelmore.)
The complainant was aware of email correspondence related to the decision to rescind a contract with the person previously hired for a similar role at The Rooms—it was sent by the Deputy Minister to the CEO of the Rooms on June 15, 2018.
The email, which had been deleted by the Department, was obtained by the Executive Council. Additional information, including the email, was supplied to the Privacy Commissioner’s office in the form of a report authored by the Citizen’s Rep.
The complainant raised serious concerns about the possibility that the records being sought existed, but were possibly improperly deleted.
The Privacy Commissioner found that the Department did not fulfill its duty to assist and that it revise its internal access to information process.
Quote from the Privacy Commissioner’s report:
“In this case, the applicant was clearly looking for records related to how the Executive Director position was created and filled and was under the impression that these records would be best found at the Department. The Department did not correct this impression. Moreover, the Department has maintained that it did not have a role to play in human resources decisions at the Rooms, when clearly the Government, the Minister and the DM were involved. This is important because a lack of clarity on roles and responsibilities created the circumstances in which the DM could determine that an email which clearly involved direction to the CEO to rescind a contract was transitory and order its deletion, not just from Departmental records but also from the Rooms. Therefore, while similarly not a formal 14 R Report A-2020-007 recommendation under ATIPPA, 2015, it would be beneficial for future access requests if the Department examined its roles and responsibilities with the agencies, boards and commissions with which it interacts, with a particular attention to ensuring that information management practices align with the accountability structures mandated by the relevant statutes.”
