[quote=“Pantagruel”]
The Office of the Information of the Privacy Commissioner has a interesting mandate. Basically, they make their own rules on what should be the interpretation of the FOIPOI Act. If you dispute their interpretation, you wind up duking it out in BC Supreme Court. Your little organization on one side, and the whole OICP on the other side with some really skilled lawyers on the other. You get to pay twice. First you pay your lawyers and then your taxes pay the the OICP laywers. Not too many organizations have the funds to go this route and so the FOIPOI rulings are only very infrequently contested.[/quote]
The Commissioner applies the law and has considerable control over the procedures, much like other tribunals, eg the Labour Relations Board and Human Rights Commission.
No doubt some public bodies or officials would rather not be subject to independent oversight or bother with procedural requirements when excluding the public from meetings, but transparency is a legal requirement and a democratic principle in this province, the exception being protection of privacy.
The advantage to the citizen is that filing a complaint does not cost anything and they do not need a lawyer. As well as receiving submissions from the citizen and the public body, the Commissioner appoints an investigator who renders a report. The decision or order is enforceable the same as a court order.
The citizen (and the public body for that matter) do not get caught up in costly proceedings where whoever has deeper pockets may effectively win (like the City is going through with Sunwave, where the City has had to spend about $400K a year on legal fees since 2010). If the public body wants to challenge a Commissioner’s order through judicial review, they will be up against Commission lawyers who no doubt know that area of law very well.