Justice minister says if privacy commissioner needs more resources, she should ask

The current backlog for appeals of freedom of information request results in the province is unacceptable, according to Nova Scotia's justice minister, although his suggested remedy is one successive privacy commissioners have pursued without success.

Brad Johns told reporters following a cabinet meeting last week that he thinks the turnaround time on appeals to the commissioner's office should be "within a year, at maximum."

That would be a major improvement over the current backlog, which stands at four years. In her recent annual report, Nova Scotia privacy commissioner Tricia Ralph said she's faced the same series of concerns about resources and the authority to do her job since taking the role in 2020.

Johns said if more resources are required to improve the workflow of the privacy commissioner's office, all Ralph has to do ask.

"I would certainly encourage the commissioner to come forward at budget time and make a case so that we can put it in our budget process to get some additional staffing there," he said.

Previous broken promises

But that has happened already — multiple times and by multiple privacy commissioners.

After the release of her annual report last month, Ralph said requests for more resources have been repeatedly rebuffed.

Her office has three term positions funded by Johns's department with the intention to help cut into the workload, but Ralph said that has presented its own challenges because they don't know how long those people will be with the office. Johns said he's asked staff to look at whether any of those term positions should be made permanent.

The Tories are the latest government to have promised to overhaul Nova Scotia's Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act while they were in opposition, only to project less urgency upon coming to power.

Former premier Stephen McNeil signed a letter promising to give the commissioner order-making power. Currently, the commissioner can only make recommendations and public bodies are not compelled to follow them.

But after forming government in 2013, McNeil would eventually say that promise was a mistake. He also admitted to preferring the phone to email so his communications could not be captured by the act.

While in opposition, Premier Tim Houston vigorously criticized the Liberals for failing to give the commissioner the power to make orders.

Houston successfully sued the government — inviting TV cameras along on the day he filed paperwork — when the Liberals refused to turn over information about the ferry service between Nova Scotia and Maine that the privacy commissioner of the day said should be released.

'No need to reinvent the wheel'

But despite his own promises to modernize the legislation and grant independent order-making power to the commissioner, so far Houston has not made any changes.

Last week, Johns said an internal committee assembled to review the legislation should begin consultation in September with the 400 public bodies covered by the act, as well as members of the public and reporters.

The minister could not say how long that work would take, but said he hoped to have it done before the next provincial election, which is two years away.

It's been decades since the act last received major changes. Since then, much has changed about technology and the way people communicate, said Johns.

"I really think we need to consult with a wide variety of people to ensure that we encapsulate all of that," he said.

But Ralph thinks changes can be arrived at without an exhaustive jurisdictional scan.

"There's no need to reinvent the wheel," she said in a recent interview.

"There are current pieces of legislation across this country that have order-making, that have more modernized principles and in many ways you want access-to-information legislation to be quite similar across jurisdictions."