The B.C. Liberal government has suspended a Ministry of Transportation employee in the wake of an allegation by a former staff member to Todd Stone that emails were secretly deleted.
NDP MLAs produced letters from the former assistant, who says a supervisor deleted emails from his computer to keep them from being considered for a freedom of information (FOI) request regarding the Highway of Tears in Northern B.C.
Former executive assistant Tim Duncan wrote to B.C. Privacy Commissioner Elizabeth Dunham on Thursday, saying his supervisor told him to delete a dozen of his emails in November 2014 after an FOI request came to the ministry.
“When I hesitated, 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 any more’,” Duncan wrote to the privacy commissioner.
Stone, the transportation minister, said on Thursday that, based on advice from the public service agency, the employee has been suspended with pay until an investigation by the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner is complete.
“Bottom line for me is this: I have always expected and continue to expect the staff in my office to follow the rules, which are clearly detailed in the relevant legislation,” Stone said.
He said the government will await the investigation by the privacy commissioner.
A history of missing and murdered women along the remote highway from Prince George to Prince Rupert led to a series of community meetings last year. Opposition critics have been demanding records from the meetings and calling for additional bus service along the highway to keep vulnerable people from hitch-hiking.
Confronted with the letter in question period on Thursday, Premier Christy Clark said records should not be deleted once an FOI request is made. Citizens’ Services Minister Amrik Virk said not every email is considered a government record.
Stone said he intends to have a “frank” discussion with his ministerial assistant, George Gretes, about the accusation Gretes deleted the emails.
In an email to NDP Leader John Horgan’s office, Duncan acknowledged he had no evidence of the incident or the content of the deleted messages. He said he blew the whistle on the Highway 16 FOI because his father was murdered in a domestic incident in 2010 and he believes the families of missing and murdered people “deserve better.”
Duncan was appointed to his job in October 2014.
He told the NDP he left “the cesspool that is the B.C. government in March” and reported to Denham he believes abuse of the FOI process is “widespread and most likely systemic within the Clark government.”
— with files from Black Press
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