Privacy watchdog wants public better informed about risks
Posted December 2, 2013 2:49 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VICTORIA (NEWS1130) – BC’s Privacy Commissioner Elizabeth Denham says she’s concerned public bodies in the province don’t know they have a duty to warn people about environmental, health and public safety concerns.
Denham released a report today that calls for the government to amend the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act to allow more information about potential problems to be released to the public. “This is mandatory, it’s not discretionary. It applies to all public bodies from school boards to municipalities to health authorities to all government ministries. Twenty years in, I am concerned that public bodies don’t have the policies, the awareness, the training.”
Denham’s report says the Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations Ministry failed to tell Oliver and Osoyoos-area residents about the risk of the potential failure of the Testalinden Dam, which collapsed three years ago.
