City Committee Charts Course for Complaints & Confidentiality

Medicine Hat is expanding confidentiality training to all employees and creating a new whistleblower policy to modernize transparency and protect those who report problems.

From Reactive to Proactive Transparency

Councillor Stuart Young,

Nov 3 2025

Photo Kelly Allard

The ALRGC (Administrative And Legislative Review And Government Relations Committee) met on Tuesday Jan 13 2026. The committee heard an update on the city’s Access to Information and Protection of Privacy (ATIPP) program. This program deals with public requests for city records and is required to keep personal information safe.

Committee Chair Councillor Stuart Young led the discussion. A key issue is the growing number of information requests from the public which surged in 2023 when power prices went through the roof, angering a lot of residents. The explanations given by the City at the time were highly criticized and more people started filing FOIP requests.

The rising distrust of the city was compounded by former city manager Ann Mitchell who was opposed to releasing certain information, including salary details for top administration. 

Before 2023 the city received a handful of FOIP requests per year, two staff members were sufficient to handle them.

In 2025 the city received about 80 requests, 20 of those were still outstanding on Tuesday.

All requests must be fulfilled within 30 business days (it used to be 30 calendar days), the city can send a letter telling the applicant they are extending it for another 30 business days. After that, the city would have to ask permission of the OIPC (Office of Information and Privacy Commission) for permission to extend.

In 2024, Mayor Linnsie Clark suggested the city should be proactive, advocating for putting any FOIPable information online as a way to reduce FOIP requests.

Records and Information Management Coordinator Genesta Amiro told the committee that the city is now required by legislation to train every employee on the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy (ATIPP) Act. (The Owl asked Ms Amiro for specifics on how many employees have completed such training in the past; she could not provide a definitive number. Online courses were available for free on the Government of Alberta website. As for the number of staff that have completed the training, Amiro told the Owl, “I think it is fair to say that most completed training.)

The city has had some dramatic FOIP failures in the past including

- the improper disclosure of private names

- the distribution of information that was out of scope, and

- the release of confidential documents like closed committee meeting notes 

Other legitimate requests were wrongly denied. 

The committee also heard that they are in the process of renaming documents to align with industry best practices, that records are often hard to locate making fulfilling information requests that much more difficult. 

Councillor Young asked what the KPIs (Key Performance Indicator) were on this information and was told there are currently none. Young stated that it would be helpful to have so they can provide that information to the public.

Records Management 

Records management was also discussed. The stated goal is to make information easy for residents to find, which could help lower the number of ATIA requests staff have to process.

The city is now working on a project to better manage all its records and data. This includes:

• Updating rules for how long to keep different kinds of records.

• Training all staff on privacy and best practices.

• Creating a better system to find and catalog information so it’s easier to get what people need.

A new privacy law means the city must have a formal Privacy Management Program in place by June 11, 2026. Work has started on this, including new training for all departments.

Councillors also discussed making more information available online in a simple, clear way, perhaps by using the city’s website to share data similar to a 311 system which the City of Medicine Hat lacks, and looking at how other cities do it well.

Whistleblower Policy

The Whistleblower program was brought back for discussion. This is a system for city employees, contractors, or even members of the public to safely report serious wrongdoing, like fraud or breaking rules, without fear of punishment.

It was originally due by the end of Q4 in 2025 but it was delayed until Q1 2026 to allow the vastly rookie council to get up to speed.

At the October 6 2025 council meeting, councillors Sharps and McGrogan moved that Council direct Administration to 

Review Policy 8046 – Whistleblower Policy, and recommend amendments to:

• Extend eligibility for whistleblower reporting to include contractors, suppliers, and members of the public; 

• Introduce an independent, third-party reporting mechanism that allows for anonymous disclosures; 

• Strengthen anti-retaliation protections for whistleblowers; and 

• Provide annual, anonymized reporting on the number and types of disclosures received and outcomes to council.

Staff expects to have the final policy ready by the end of March 2026. An RFP will be issued for hiring an outside service to run the reporting hotline.

Councillor Young stressed that the system needs to be fair, simple, and quick for people who use it. Young said he wants to make sure it is helpful and isn’t misused. City staff said they will track details like how many reports come in and how long they take to resolve. Because the public has never been able to use this policy before the number of reports is anticipated to be higher at first.

Both projects are still in progress. The committee plans to get more updates and bring final plans to the full council for approval in the coming months.

After the Meeting

The Owl takes every opportunity its to ask questions after the public meeting is over. Currently committee meetings are aired via MS Teams, the city only records them for internal use by staff or council members. They are not available to the public. 

The Owl is the only news outlet that streams these meetings and saves them for public consumption after the fact. Legacy news outlets have used our recordings to assist them in their own work. (We have now put these meetings behind a paywall, our competition now needs to pay us if they want to use our product in a timely manner.)

The Owl asked if the city plans to make these meetings available to view later on their YouTube channel and they have indeed been discussing it. They discussed ways they could do, one suggestion was to move the committee meetings to Council Chambers.

The Owl has found that once it was known that we were recording these meetings for public use that the behaviour in the meetings got more professional - we have the recording where a 2021 council member said something disparaging about a resident. At the time that would have been in violation of 8.1(b) of  the now defunct Council Code of Conduct Bylaw 4805 which says that council members are to “treat members of the public with courtesy, dignity and respect without abuse or intimidation”.

The Owl applauds this move by the city. We think this information is so important to the public that we have been doing it for years at our own expense. We will keep doing it until the city puts it into practice and has it down to a science.