B.C. premier Christy Clark has essentially stopped using email, a response to a freedom-of-information (FOI) request suggests. Either that or she has been sending emails and then deleting them.
If the latter is true, it would contradict an order Clark gave in response to a scathing report on government record-keeping that the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of B.C. (OIPC) released on October 22.
“I’ve told everyone at the political level, ministers, political staff, even if it’s clearly a transitory document that you are required by law to delete—I want you to keep it,” Clarksaid on October 23.
Yet an FOI request for all emails Clark sent from October 19 to 22 and from October 26 to 29 turned up just one document.
“Can you send me a copy of that note you typed us for me recently and stuck in my book?” the sender wrote to communications coordinator Chelsea Dolan. (The sender’s name is redacted but it can be assumed it was Clark, given the parameters of the FOI request.)
The Straightpreviously reported that a request for Clark’s emails from a two-week period in December 2014 produced no records.
The premier’s office did not grant an interview.
The request for Clark’s October correspondence was filed by the NDP. David Eby, New Democrat MLA for Vancouver–Point Grey, told the Straight the lack of records the request produced is noteworthy because it shows that Clark’s email habits did not change despite her instructing staff to retain their communications.
“It is hard for me to imagine how you could be the premier and have one email over two weeks,” Eby said. “It just doesn’t make any sense to me and strongly suggests she is either deleting her own emails or she is not using email to avoid creating records that could be FOI’d.”
The OIPC’s October 22 report details how employees in the premier’s office plus staff at two ministries had “triple deleted” emails, taking extra steps to expunge records from computers. In addition, the OIPC has accused one employee with the Ministry of Transportation of giving false testimony about the practice while he was under oath. That case has been forwarded to the RCMP.
Clark has repeatedly claimed that email is not her preferred means of communication and said she conducts government business face to face.
The premier tapped former B.C. privacy commissioner David Loukidelis to instruct the government on how it should implement recommendations outlined in the OIPC’s October 22 report. As the Straight went to press, Loukidelis was scheduled to present his findings on December 16. (Update: Loukidelis’s report can be found here.)
A freedom-of-information request filed by the NDP found more than 800 “message tracking logs” for emails related to an account operated by Tobie Myers, chief of staff to B.C. Minister Rich Coleman, yet a separate request for the contents of some of those emails resulted in the government producing just three messages.
The B.C. New Democrats say they are collecting a growing body of evidence that proves a Liberal government practice of deleting emails was “systemic” and explicitly for the purpose of preventing the release of information to the public.
In a telephone interview, David Eby, MLA for Vancouver–Point Grey, said the NDP will forward the documents it has collected to the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for B.C. (OIPC) and that body can then decide if a formal investigation is warranted.
The Opposition member’s claims come on the heels of an October 22 OIPC report that details how employees in the premier’s office, plus staff at two ministries, had “triple deleted” emails, taking extra steps to expunge records from computers. The results of that investigation implicate the premier’s deputy chief of staff, Michele Cadario. In addition, the OIPC has accused one government employee, George Gretes, of giving false testimony about the practice while he was under oath. That case has been forwarded to the RCMP.
“The practice we observed was the routine emptying of the Recover Deleted Items folder to ensure that emails were permanently deleted from an employee’s system,” the OIPC report reads. “This is not the intention of the Recover Deleted Items folder and for employees managing their mail account it serves no legitimate purpose.”
The file the NDP is building already includes information on a number of additional email addresses that were not the subject of that investigation, Eby said, one of those being an account that belongs to the premier herself.
Eby explained the NDP filed a freedom-of-information request that asked for all correspondence to and from Premier Christy Clark’s public and private email addresses for a two-week period in December 2014 (coinciding with an announcement about the Site C dam). That request resulted in the government stating it could find no records meeting the criteria of the request.
A subsequent freedom-of-information request asked for the “message tracking logs” for the same account and same period, Eby continued. The government’s response to that request, however, stated that there were more than 150 emails sent from the premier’s public account during that time frame.
Eby said the NDP has similar evidence of missing emails for accounts controlled by Tobie Myers, chief of staff to Rich Coleman—who oversees several ministry portfolios, including liquefied natural gas—as well as the email account of John Dyble, deputy minister to the premier. (B.C. NDP leader John Horgan provided more information related to the case of Myers in an October 26 blog post. An October 27 report by the Vancouver Sun adds details to accusations regarding Dyble.)
Eby maintained that those discrepancies—a number of which were reviewed by the Straight—suggest that hundreds of emails pertinent to government business were deleted from the premier’s account as well as the accounts of top government officials.
Meanwhile, freelance journalist Bob Mackin has stated publicly he may have proof that emails were deleted from accounts belonging to Sam Oliphant and Maclean Kay, both of whom work in the premier’s office as media relations officers.
The premier’s office did not respond to a request for comment by deadline. Clark has said her government is cooperating with the OIPC and has emphasized that she has ordered all government employees to refrain from deleting emails.
ACORN member Laura Cairns is one of tens of thousands of Lower Mainland residents 25 years or older who struggles to get by on the miniumum wage. Travis Lupick photo.
On September 15, British Columbia’s minimum wage increased by 20 cents, to $10.45 an hour. There was no press conference. Since the hike was announced last March, the government has barely said a word about it. That’s despite Premier Christy Clarkhaving personally championed a higher minimum wage.
Just days after assuming office in 2011, for example, Clark pledged to keep B.C.’s minimum wage out of the gutter where her predecessor, Gordon Campbell, had left it at $8 an hour for a decade.
“We’re not going to be number one in the country by any stretch,” Clark said on CKNW radio on March 17, 2011. “But we’re going to be catching up. We won’t be at the bottom anymore.”
That promise held for a couple of years after Clark raised the minimum wage to $10.25 in 2012, Irene Lanzinger told theGeorgia Straight. But the president of the B.C. Federation of Labour quickly added Clark’s commitment is about to be broken and stay that way.
Lanzinger explained that when one ranks B.C. alongside Canada’s other provinces and territories, B.C.’s minimum wage will soon drop all the way down to 12th out of 13 jurisdictions in the country. She noted that’s according to the federal Labour Program, which has compiled forthcoming changes scheduled for implementation before the end of 2015.
A federal document states five provinces are about to implement their own wage hikes effective October 1. Those are Alberta (going to $11.20), Manitoba ($11), Newfoundland and Labrador ($10.50), Ontario ($11.25), and Saskatchewan ($10.50). In addition, Lanzinger noted New Brunswick has committed to an $11 minimum wage by 2017, which means B.C. could soon rank dead last.
Lanzinger said an insufficient increase to the minimum wage is half the problem. The other half, she continued, is that B.C. simultaneously pegged the province’s minimum wage to the Consumer Price Index (CPI), a statistical estimate similar to a measure of inflation.
By itself, Lanzinger said, that would be a good thing that provides predictability to both employees and employers. However, she asserted, tying the minimum wage to the CPI coupled with that modest bump of 20 cents means the bottom of the country is where B.C.’s new minimum wage will remain.
“We are essentially indexing poverty,” she said. “We’ve got people earning poverty wages at our current minimum wage, and they will never get out of poverty. If you are going to peg it to something, you need to raise it above the poverty line first.”
The B.C. Ministry of Jobs, Tourism and Skills Training didn’t make a representative available for an interview.
Opponents of a higher minimum wage often claim it’s an issue that’s largely confined to young people on their way to higher-paying jobs.
According to a government analysis obtained via a freedom-of-information request, in 2013 there were 120,400 British Columbians earning the minimum wage. Of those, 47 percent, or 56,100, were 25 years or older. The ministry’s March 12 news releaseannouncing the change to $10.45 states there were then only 110,400 British Columbians earning the minimum wage. However, those revised statistics leave out how many are older than 24.
One of those people is Laura Cairns. She’s in her early 50s, living with her daughter in a one-bedroom apartment in New Westminster.
A decade ago, Cairns recounted, she worked as an office manager and earned double the minimum wage. Then her parents got sick and she was forced to leave the workforce to take care of them.
“I stepped out of the mainstream economy to look after my parents and now that I’ve stepped back in, I’m forced back to minimum wage,” she said.
Today, Cairns works temporary jobs in warehouses or cleaning construction sites.
“People look down on me now because I am a low-wage earner,” Cairns said. “I’m used to people’s opinions and judgments. But it’s very demoralizing.”
When Lanzinger claimed B.C.’s new minimum wage will keep British Columbians like Cairns in poverty, she wasn’t spouting rhetoric. In B.C., everybody who survives on the minimum wage and who resides in a city of more than 500,000 people officially lives in poverty.
According to Statistics Canada data, the 2014 poverty line in a metropolitan area like Vancouver was a before-tax income of $24,328 a year.
If Cairns works 40 hours a week for $10.45 an hour, she’ll earn $21,736 a year, falling $2,592 short of breaking even with the poverty line.
The bar is lower for rural areas. But for the estimated 60,000 minimum-wage earners living in Metro Vancouver, the Straight calculated what’s needed to raise them out of poverty is a minimum wage of $11.70 an hour.
Iglika Ivanova is a senior economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives’ B.C. office. In a telephone interview, she said her organization has called for a $15 minimum wage because that’s what’s needed to truly constitute a living wage. But she emphasized even the Straight’s conservative estimate of $11.70 is more than a full dollar above B.C.’s new minimum.
“You can dispute whether that’s $12 an hour or closer to $14, depending on how you do the calculation and what you say is a full week’s work,” Ivanova explained. “But whatever you say, hundreds of thousands of people are living in poverty here in B.C. And this 20-cent increase will not bring them out of that.”
Ivanova called attention to the province’s rationale for tying the new wage to the CPI. Like Lanzinger, she agreed its predictability is a good idea in principle. But Ivanova warned tying future increases to a formula could see the government use that as an excuse to avoid revisiting the $10.45 benchmark as something that might be too low.
