BC Ferries accused of hiding email to Transportation Minister Todd Stone
The B.C. NDP want the privacy commissioner to investigate what it says is a skirting of the rules.
An email sent by BC Ferries CEO Mike Corrigan to Transportation Minister Todd Stone has become a political hot potato after the Opposition NDP accused the ferry service of trying to hide the embarrassing exchange.
The B.C. NDP filed a freedom of information request for any emails between Corrigan and Stone sent between January 1 and March 31 this year, receiving a "no records" response.
At the time, Corrigan told CBC Radio 1 that his exchanges with the minister were always by phone or face-to-face.
But the subsequent emergence of an email from the CEO to Stone produced from the same request to the Ministry of Transportation suggests otherwise, the NDP said today.
In the February email, Corrigan told Stone that his comments on a BC Ferries policy were, "not helpful or productive," and that the minister should "take this into consideration when commenting" in the future.
"This newly-released email from that same time period shows that Mr. Corrigan's comments weren't exactly true, and that BC Ferries skirted British Columbia's freedom of information laws," the NDP's Doug Routley said in a statement Thursday.
"The B.C. Liberals are already tied up in a controversy around deleted emails and skirting information laws. Now it seems publicly owned agencies are doing the same."
Routley has written to the Privacy Officer, Elizabeth Denham, to ask her to include this example in her ongoing investigation sparked by the furor over the alleged deleting of emails related to the stretch of B.C. road known as the Highway of Tears.
Corrections
- A previous version of this story said BC Ferries was a Crown corporation. In fact, it was transformed from a Crown corporation into an independent, commercial organization under the Company Act, in 2003.Jul 24, 2015 9:54 AM PT