Rainbow District School Board looks at banning note taking during in-camera meetings

Some public business has to be done in private.

City councillors, school trustees and others hold in camera meetings to talk about employee discipline, buying and selling properties and other matters.

Now, the Rainbow School District School Board is considering extending that privacy - by banning trustees from taking notes during those meetings.

Doreen Dewar, Rainbow District School Board chair, said the idea came out of a trustees' conference where privacy and confidentiality was being discussed.

"Our staff, our parents need to know while these [in camera] discussions need to occur, they are occurring in confidence and the matter is taken seriously by boards.

Taking notes isn't just something that's nice to do, it's imperative to do.- Larry Killens, Manitoulin Island trustee

But Manitoulin Island trustee Larry Killens said he hopes to have the motion rejected, citing policies that are already in place to protect sensitive information.

"I  was a police officer for 30 years," Killens said. "And taking notes isn't just something that's nice to do, it's imperative to do."

Killens said his experience as a witness in court trials taught him that if someone should accuse a trustee of speaking - or not speaking - on a sensitive topic, the notes can be used as a reference.

But Dewar said that there is the potential of having this information, even if it scribbled on top of a paper, "fall into the wrong hands."

Killens pointed out that information recorded during these in-camera meetings is still protected, and that a person filing a freedom-of-information request would still have to justify their need to access the notes.

"The person [who wants to see in-camera notes] must justify why they want to see, why they have a right to see it, and that it involves something they have the right to know about," Killens said.

But the information is not released to the person who requests it, said Killens. The information goes first to the board, who can edit, redact, or black out any information not relevant to the request.

Dewar said that she personally doesn't take notes during these meetings, and doesn't understand why any trustee would need to, either.