Vancouver city council has approved charging a $10 non-refundable fee for all “non-personal” freedom of information requests. A report from city staff recommended the fee, citing an increase in requests for records and concerns the process is being “misused in some cases.” “An application fee is intended to cover some administrative costs and discourage excessive, repetitive, piecemeal, and/or overly broad requests,” the staff report said. “This fee is not intended to block access but to balance transparency with the resources required to process requests.” B.C.’s Information and Privacy Commissioner, in a statement, noted that a report from the provincial government showed a more than 30 per cent decrease in requests it received after a fee was introduced, pointing to a potential chilling effect on people exercising their right to information held by public bodies. “At a time of declining trust in public institutions and the rapid spread of misinformation and disinformation, public bodies need to recognize the fundamental importance of access rights in our democracy and bolster their FOI systems, not erect barriers—financial or otherwise—that may inhibit it,” Michael Harvey wrote. Now that council has voted to implement the fee, Harvey said it should be done in a way that keeps access as open as possible, including by allowing multiple payment methods, setting up a system allowing the fee to be waived in some cases, and preserving the ability to submit requests anonymously. OTHER FEES CUT At Tuesday’s meeting, Green Party Coun. Pete Fry noted that the mayor’s party campaigned on reducing FOI fees by 50 per cent to increase transparency. Asked if that had happened under Mayor Ken Sim’s and his ABC majority’s tenure, city clerk Katrina Lekvokic answered that it had not. “I don’t recommend it,” she said. ABC Coun. Lisa Dominato, however, introduced an amendment that would reduce fees for more complex and time-consuming requests by half. In cases where retrieving and compiling the information sought takes more than three hours, the city charged $30 an hour for staff time preparing and handling records. Fees for scans of documents or DVDs are also levied. Dominato’s amendment would see those fees reduced “in principle” by 50 per cent, with a report back after the next civic election. The amended report passed with support from the ABC majority.
