Failures With FOIP Disclosure in the City Clerk Office - Is the Incompetence Accidental or Deliberate?
Last year I filed a FOIP for my own personal information. I got back some questionable documents such as city staff using official communication channels
to gossip about city residents between themselves but also people in to external agencies
to collect information on civic election candidates, they even gave me my own category.
They also included documents outside the date parameters of 4 years, one document was 20 years old.
I also received the account information of a third party which was an invasion of their privacy.
My disclosure did not include a document that was sent to a third party which included my unredacted name.
This year I filed another personal FOIP. The due date was Tuesday May 20 2025.
I received an email with the disclosure at 4:48 pm, 18 minutes AFTER City Hall was closed for the day.
I was not able to access the information, the link took me to a City sign in page.
They also used the wrong file number - they sent this
292024-K.Allard
When they should have sent this
Disclosure 19-2025
It took a phone conversation with Lovejoy Sibanda to enable me to access the document as it was not sent in the proper format. She ended up sending me three different documents in an unsecure link.
After all of that - Apparently the only information they have about me from the past year that they are able to release to me is my own candidate nomination papers.
There is nothing about me being removed by city police at the behest of City Staff (most likely City Manager Ann MItchell) from City Hall on May 16 2024 when I was recording a public meeting in a public place.
There is nothing about the various e-mails I have sent to city staff over the past year. (Some messages were about a certain rose that I am hoping to get planted in our parks and other housekeeping items.)
I know that there are literally dozens of e-mails to the City that I was cc’d on, some of those emails were sent to at least a dozen people.
When a FOIP request is submitted, the Public Body has up to 30 days to respond unless they send a letter saying they need more time because there are so many records.
They used the entire 30 days to tell me that all they could give me was the 8 pages of my nomination package.
The excuse they are giving is -
17(1) The head of a public body must refuse to disclose personal information to an applicant if the disclosure would be an unreasonable invasion of a third party’s personal privacy. And
24(1) The head of a public body may refuse to disclose information to an applicant if the disclosure could reasonably be expected to reveal consultations or deliberations involving officers or employees of a public body.
This is the entire section 24 of the FOIP Act - they couldn’t even be bothered to cite the exact subsection.
Advice from officials
24(1) The head of a public body may refuse to disclose information to an applicant if the disclosure could reasonably be expected to reveal
(a) advice, proposals, recommendations, analyses or policy options developed by or for a public body or a member of the Executive Council,
(b) consultations or deliberations involving
(i) officers or employees of a public body,
(ii) a member of the Executive Council, or
(iii) the staff of a member of the Executive Council,
(c) positions, plans, procedures, criteria or instructions developed for the purpose of contractual or other negotiations by or on behalf of the Government of Alberta or a public body, or considerations that relate to those negotiations,
(d) plans relating to the management of personnel or the administration of a public body that have not yet been implemented,
e) the contents of draft legislation, regulations and orders of members of the Executive Council or the Lieutenant Governor in Council,
(f) the contents of agendas or minutes of meetings
(i) of the governing body of an agency, board, commission, corporation, office or other body that is designated as a public body in the regulations, or
(ii) of a committee of a governing body referred to in subclause (i),
(g) information, including the proposed plans, policies or projects of a public body, the disclosure of which could reasonably be expected to result in disclosure of a pending policy or budgetary decision, or
(h) the contents of a formal research or audit report that in the opinion of the head of the public body is incomplete unless no progress has been made on the report for at least 3 years.
They are not even trying to hide their contempt of the law
After the conversation with Ms Sibanda to remedy the problem with accessing the documents sent to me, I sent these screenshots and asked when the e-mail in question was sent out.
Note that this email was sent to “every individual within our organization”.
NB - City staff are afraid that their e-mails are being monitored so they are not forwarding e-mails, they’re taking screenshots instead.
After not hearing back about the above screenshots for 2 days, I called the City Clerk’s office on the morning of Friday May 23. I received an email within minutes which said,
Good day Ms. Allard,
We acknowledge receipt of your inquiry.
We would like to inform you that your request was escalated for further review. As a result, the City is providing an additional record that was received after the original disclosure date. This record is accessible on RE_ FOIP Request_Redacted.pdf
Please note that under sections 65 to 68 of the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FOIP), you have the right to request a review of our response. If you wish to do so, you may submit a request to the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner (OIPC) within 60 days of receiving the disclosure letter. Guidance on how to proceed can be found on the OIPC website: https://oipc.ab.ca/request-a-review-file-a-complaint/
Kindy (sic) direct all FOIP inquies (sic) to foip@medicinehat.ca
Best Regards,
FOIP Office
NB - I am being told to direct all inquiries to the e-mail address. I see that as directing me to not make phone calls even thought the only way I got satisfaction was to actually speak with someone.
You’d think that I would be able to read this document right away but once again, there was an issue.
When I clicked on the link, it took me to a page that required me to have a code sent to my e-mail. However, the City Clerks’ Office did not even enter my e-mail correctly, the code was going to an e-mail that does not belong to me.
My e-mail is allardkg@telus.net
There is only one G
Not once did it occur to me that they would not copy and paste or have some sort of procedure that would ensure correct data entry. Our personal private information is not supposed to be sent to a random third party. This sort of thing is evident of an amateurish set-up and a serious breach of privacy.
Multiple calls and emails to the City Clerk’s office to try to remedy this privacy breach went unanswered. The City Clerk apparently never answers her phone, nor does she have someone answer it for her - I called multiple times and only got to voicemail. I’m hoping that other people wanting to consult with the City Clerk have an easier time getting through.
I am guessing now that I have been declared frivolous and vexatious.
I was hoping to have this issue solved before the weekend but I received no response from the City Clerk’s office. I tried calling, I tried sending e-mails until 2:22pm. Nothing. On Monday morning I did finally gain access to the following document from 2024.
Yes, they really did send me a blank page of paper. The redactions are the City’s.
They actually directed the IT department to tell them how many hours it would take, they actually directed the IT dept to NOT do anything yet, saying -
Would you kindly let us know how much staff time (in hours) it is estimated that would be required in retrieving the records of the information requested above. Please do not initiate the work to retrieve them yet, just provide us with an estimate of the time needed to do so. We have a stipulated timeline to process these, therefore we would kindly appreciate your response as soon as reasonably can be.
So it this incompetence accidental or deliberate?
Either way, it raises questions that should be answered.
I did another personal FOIP request for several reasons.
to see what they had been saying about me for the past year.
to see if City Staff had learned their lesson about how to use official communication channels
to see they had become more adept at fulfilling FOIP requests
Yes, I do have the right to file a complaint with the OIPC but administration knows that the OIPC is backed up; there is no way that a decision would be rendered until after the civic election.
Once Upon a Time…
Once upon a time before the reign of our current City Manager, the City Clerk reported to the City Solicitor. Queen Ann changed that unilaterally, when she bypassed Administrative Organizational (AO) Bylaw 4662 by having the City Clerk report directly to her.
Council approved the bylaw change AFTER the reorganization was done but not before sparking the Shitshow Showdown and the subsequent Council Code of Conduct complaint which resulted in unjust sanctions against our Mayor.
In the Judicial review of those sanctions, Justice Nation declined to send the issue of the struck sanctions back to city council, stating that the council members who determined the sanctions “appear to have no sense of proportionality in crafting sanctions and have imposed sanctions that have no rational connection with the breach of the Code.”
Once upon a time (before City Managers Merete Heggelund, Bob Nicolay and Ann Mitchell changed the AO Bylaw), Council had the power to hire and fire top administration. Council was expected to consult with the City Manager but top staff knew their job would not disappear at the whim of a petulant and/or incompetent City Manager.
Once upon a time the City Clerk and the City Solicitor reported directly to Council. Again, they did not have to fear for their jobs disappearing at the whim of a petulant and/or incompetent City Manager.
Once upon a time Council could ask questions of senior administration without being accused of being untrusting by a a petulant and/or incompetent City Manager.
