Vancouver police ignore FOI requests for chief's communications

For nearly a year, the Vancouver Police Department has failed to fulfill two freedom of information requests seeking records from Chief Adam Palmer and other high-ranking officials – a situation transparency advocates call highly concerning, and potentially illegal.

Under B.C.’s Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, public bodies such as government ministries and policing agencies are not only required to comply with FOI requests, but to do so within a reasonable timeframe.

That generally means responding within 30 days, though extensions are allowed under some circumstances.

“For an institution to be found not complying with the law – especially a law enforcement institution, I might add – is not a good look,” said Mike Larsen, president of the Freedom of Information and Privacy Association, a non-profit advocacy organization.

A provincial watchdog is reviewing the police department's response to the FOI requests, but has yet to make any findings.

Larsen noted that taxpayer-funded bodies are not supposed to have a choice about whether they will make a good-faith effort to provide records to the public they serve.

“An FOI request is not really a request,” he added. “It’s a legal mechanism.”

The records sought

CTV News submitted the requests in November 2023, asking for email and text communications from Palmer and others in the year leading up to the 2022 municipal election – specifically, those referencing then-mayoral-candidate Ken Sim, the election itself, or stranger assaults, which became a highly politicized issue during the campaign. 

Activists and criminologists had raised concerns about the appearance of increased politicization within Palmer’s department after Sim – who ran on a promise to hire 100 new officers, and had former police spokesperson Brian Montague on his party’s ticket – received an unprecedented endorsement from the Vancouver Police Union that year.

During his campaign, Sim repeatedly referenced alarming police statistics about a rise in stranger assaults in the city. It wasn’t until a year after he swept into power with a decisive victory that Vancouver police shared data – following repeated requests from CTV News – showing the attacks had actually been on a steep decline for all of 2022. 

Voters were never privy to that information before casting their ballots.

Larsen opined that FOI requests seeking internal communications on the police union’s preferred mayoral candidate, and on one of the key public safety issues of the campaign, are well within the public interest, and easy enough to fulfill.

“To be essentially ghosted on your file,” he said, “raises a whole bunch of flags for me, a lot of concerns.”

Asked why his department has yet to provide records for either FOI request, Palmer said he had never been made aware of them.

“That is not something that would come across my desk,” said Palmer, following Thursday’s Vancouver Police Board meeting.

“I would find it hard to believe that our FOI lawyers would cut off contact with you,” he added. “We get thousands of requests like that and we process all of them accordingly.”

Ignored emails, uncashed cheque

A lawyer for the Vancouver Police Department took more than two months to respond to either FOI request from CTV News, well beyond the 30-day limit.

He ultimately asked that both requests be revised, and said compiling the records for each would require payment, as is allowed for FOIs that take significant time and effort. He quoted $199.50 for the communications referencing stranger assaults, but never provided an estimate for the records referencing Ken Sim or the election, despite repeated follow-up emails this year.

And while CTV News provided a cheque for the stranger assault records in May, the FOI department has yet to cash it many months later, and has ignored multiple emails asking about the status of that request as well.

The department’s lawyer has not responded to any communications from CTV News since April 2024.

Larsen found the delayed timeline and unanswered emails highly unusual, and disappointing.

“From the correspondence, I see you guys doing everything you can to try and reach out, to clarify, to ask for status updates, and not getting an appropriate response,” Larsen said.

“That’s not the same as just having a friend who doesn’t get back to you in time. This is the law we’re talking about here, and it’s likely a failure to comply.”

Handling of FOIs under review

The department’s response to both FOI requests is under review by B.C.’s Information and Privacy Commissioner, which enforces the province’s transparency laws.

Commissioner Michael Harvey told CTV News he’s unable to comment on active cases, but addressed those laws and why be believes they are important.

"The ability of the people of the province to access information about their government and public bodies is fundamental to their ability to hold them to account, and that's essential for democracy,” Harvey said.

There is a reason the legislation includes mandatory timelines, he added, arguing that “access delayed is access denied.”

Troublingly, Harvey said, cases in which public bodies simply refuse to turn over their records are on the rise.

While individual instances might seem like a small matter – and there is no indication the communications requested by CTV News, if provided, would contribute anything of value to conversations around police politicization – Harvey argued FOI compliance is crucial to maintaining public confidence in the government.

"When people think their public bodies are not being transparent with them, what they believe is that they're hiding something, and that erodes trust," he said.

"We are in an environment now where we've seen increased polarization and diminishing political trust, and public bodies in this province, just like anywhere in Canada and the world, cannot afford to be taking the trust of the population for granted."