A former B.C. government staffer alleges more than a dozen emails relating to missing women were deleted in response to a Freedom of Information request.
Tim Duncan, who worked as an executive assistant in the Ministry of Transportation, said the ministry received an FOI request in November 2014 for records on meetings that related to missing women on the Highway of Tears.
The Highway of Tears is what many in B.C. call Highway 16, where at least 18 women and girls -- many of them aboriginal -- have been murdered or gone missing.
Duncan recounted his story in a letter he sent to B.C. Privacy Commissioner Elizabeth Duncan.
Duncan said he found more than a dozen emails on the topic requested, but was told to trash them by a ministerial assistant.
“When I hesitate(d), he took away my keyboard, deleted the emails and returned the keyboard stating, ‘It’s done. Now you don’t have to worry about it anymore,’” Duncan wrote.
Duncan said he again questioned the appropriateness of deleting emails to a Liberal Party research director, but she “brushed off” his concerns and made references to the television show The West Wing.
No one has been charged and the allegations have not been tested in court.
Transportation Minister Todd Stone told reporters in Victoria on Thursday that he takes such allegations seriously, and that Freedom of Information rules are “crystal clear.”
“As the premier mentioned today, there’s a tremendous amount of information that flows in and out of offices that is defined in the act as transitory information,” Stone said. “Once an FOI request comes in, those records -- those transitory documents -- become documents that must be retained and provided in response to the FOI requested.”
According to Stone, Duncan worked in his officer for “only two to three months.”
