All posts by Micki Cowan

Answers to info requests getting less timely in B.C., documents show

Access-to-information story
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By Micki Cowan

The B.C. government is losing track of time when it comes to answering Freedom of Information requests, with recent numbers showing the lowest percentage of timely requests in five years.

Data obtained under Canada’s Freedom of Information and Privacy Act this month shows one-quarter of requests were not answered on time between April 2013 and January 2014.

An analysis of the data shows that number is the lowest since 2008-09 when 28 per cent were answered late, and significantly lower than the thirteen per cent answered late last fiscal year.

The Ministry of Technology, Innovation and Citizens’ Services, which is responsible for Freedom of Information requests, declined interview requests.

In an email response, ministry spokeswoman Melody Wey said the projected decline in timeliness this year is due to a backlog of requests from last year.

In 2012-13 the provincial government received more than 9,000 requests, which is 16 per cent more than the previous year, Wey said.

According to Wey, staff is working to improve timeliness rates by reducing the number of steps in processing Freedom of Information requests and using new software.

But NDP technology critic George Heyman said the numbers show the B.C. Liberals are not doing very well when it comes to transparency and timeliness.

“If we don’t have access in a timely manner, it means the people whose job it is to hold government to account, whether it’s the media or the opposition, can’t do that effectively,” Heyman said.

The B.C. Liberals were recently criticized in newspaper articles for returning a high number of requests with no documents found.

The obtained documents also show that late requests on average this year are overdue double the amount of days they were last year, rising to 44 days from 22.

Sean Holman, an assistant professor of journalism at Calgary’s Mount Royal University, said the decline in timeliness is likely related to censoring.

Freedom of Information offices are not just in the business of retrieving information, Holman explained, but “eliminating information before it goes out the door.”

“If we had a system where everything is disclosed, we wouldn’t have these kinds of delays,” he said.

Holman filed hundreds of Freedom of Information requests as the founder of Public Eye, a now-defunct online political watchdog website.

He is currently waiting on three late requests from the B.C. government, one of which came with a $2,000 price tag and one of which is now under appeal.

When asked if the requests were on time, Holman said he never expects that anymore.

“I always expect government to take the maximum and that’s generally speaking how it plays out.”

B.C.’s information and privacy commissioner published three reports on timeliness in 2011.

In the office’s April 2012 six-month check-up report, Commissioner Elizabeth Denham criticized the timeliness of the government in answering political party’s access requests.

“Timely responses to access requests promote public trust and confidence,” Denham wrote in the report.

The commissioner declined an interview request, but in an email response spokeswoman Cara McGregor said the commissioner has since shifted focus away from timeliness toward assessing how well the government is doing making information public before it’s requested.

When pushed for a response to questions, McGregor said timeliness in Freedom of Information responses is still a high priority for the office, but its focus shifted when it saw an improvement in the government’s overall timeliness rating.

“Future actions our office takes on the timeliness file will be made public,” she wrote.

Holman said he’s not surprised at the numbers overall.

“It’s always a fight with government and it is always going to be a fight,” he said.

Click below to see my six access requests, correspondence and two pages of relevant information from documents I received.



Part E: Pages 47-48
(*) What is the information?
This information shows how the B.C. government is doing with responding to Access to Information requests. It gives a breakdown of the numbers, which shows they are being answered more late than usual.

(*) From which department and level of government did you obtain these pages?
The B.C. provincial government’s Ministry of Technology, Innovation and Citizens’ Services.

(*) Why was this information helpful?
This information gave an update to how the government is performing this year at Freedom of Information requests. The information was available earlier than its usual April reveal. The information adds to the story about Access to Information requests that many journalists were telling a week prior, but gives the new angle of timeliness that was not previously reported on.

Highest number of bylaw issues at troubled Granville Street rental

Database Assignment
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A heat map shows a large portion of the current bylaw violations in Vancouver are in the Downtown Eastside.

By Micki Cowan

A problematic housing unit on Granville Street has the most current bylaw violations of any licensed rental property in Vancouver, according to an analysis of the city’s rental housing database.

The database, which launched Jan. 15 2013, tracks the number of landlords with outstanding bylaw violations filed by tenants. The database listing is updated daily, with most of the unresolved violations occurring within the last three years.

The 73-unit Clifton Hotel at 1125 Granville St. topped the list with 60 violations on March 8. The issues range from a lack of smoke alarms to pest infestations.

Click on the map below to find out which properties have unresolved bylaw issues:

City Coun. Geoff Meggs, who sits on the city’s housing committee, said the database was created to address the quality of rental housing. Meggs said some landlords simply fail to repair their housing when a violation occurs and the database addresses that.

“What we’ve found is by posting these, particularly on the hard cases, it leads very quickly to better compliance, because people don’t want to be listed on this database,” Meggs said.

Since the launch, Meggs said the city’s seen a decline in the number of people with more than five infractions and landlords are fixing issues faster.

However, in the case of the Clifton, the city sought a court injunction in July 2013 to order the shareholders of the company that owns the building, Abolghasem Abdollahi, Zohreh Fazi-Mashhadi and Yahya Nickpour, to clean it up.

An injunction is a court document that allows the city to ask the court to order a landlord to adhere to city bylaws and fix their property, according to Meggs.

Meggs said the city only seeks an injunction in “really egregious” cases, but that injunctions are generally an effective way of dealing with landlords who don’t comply.

“We seek a court order that he’s got to comply with the law and if they fail to, they can be in contempt of court but also pay a fine,” he said.

Meggs said they don’t seek an injunction if the landlord is making progress or confronting their problems, and the Clifton’s injunction was the first case since the database launched in January.

Click below to hear Coun. Geoff Meggs explain what renters get out of the database:

The Clifton’s company shareholders have since been involved in their own court case, as they bicker over who has the rights and responsibilities to the property.

According to Abdollahi’s lawyer, W. Gerald Mazzei, the court case is holding back renovations at the Clifton.

Mazzei said Abdollahi already spent more than $200,000 in repairs to the property since taking over management in March.

“His plan is to fully renovate the hotel,” said Mazzei of Abdollahi. “It’s just that with all this litigation going on, he’s only been able to do sort of the bare minimum to look after the immediate concerns of the city.”

Bob Nicklin is CEO of the nonprofit Affordable Housing Societies, which owns and manages low- to medium-income rental housing in B.C.’s Lower Mainland.

The group owns one property in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside that’s listed in the database. The 84-unit building at 43 Powell St. has four unresolved bylaw infractions, which include a general maintenance issue and the need to inspect and test all emergency lights.

“We want win-win solutions and that’s what we strive to achieve,” Nicklin said. “I wouldn’t pretend that all 3500 of our tenants are happy with us either, because you just can’t keep people happy all the time.”

According to Meggs, most rental bylaw infraction are sorted out within a few months, although not always.

“There can be cases where they last a while for legitimate reasons,” he said. “That’s the kind of case where you have to be patient.”

The following annotations on this document from the City of Vancouver points out interesting ideas behind the database’s development.



Anti-gay murder of Ottawa man still inspires equality 25 years later

Assignment 2, Whatever-Happened-To? Assignment
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By Micki Cowan

Twenty-five years after Alain Brosseau was killed in an anti-gay hate crime, new recruits at the Ottawa Police still hear the tragic story of his death.

The story is part of diversity training, where minority representatives speak to new recruits. Luke Smith, committee coordinator for the GLBT police liaison committee, said they tell recruits about Brosseau to teach the history of police and sexual minorities in Ottawa.

“All of our training is Ottawa-specific. An element of that is the history element, and the fact that Alain Brosseau was really the trigger moment for the creation of the committee,” Smith said.

The group, composed of community members and police, was created after Brosseau’s death sparked outcries from the gay community and then other sexual minorities, said committee co-founder David Pepper.

“I think it struck a cord that anyone, including people who weren’t queer, could be attacked because someone thought they were or accused they were or felt they happen to be, as the murderer said, ‘a faggot,’ ” Pepper said.

Brosseau, 33, was walking home from work along the Alexandra Bridge when he was attacked by a group of four men. They made fun of his shoes, and then one of Brosseau’s attackers threw him over the bridge to his death in August 1989.

In court, it came out that the men thought Brosseau was gay. He wasn’t, but his death brought attention to the major issue of hate-inspired actions against sexual minorities in Ottawa in the late 80s and early 90s.

Pepper said he remembers the violence against gays around the time Brosseau was killed – people were who robbed, beaten up and chased because of their sexual orientation.

The brutality and randomness of the murder was part of what finally spurred Pepper to call for change. Pepper said police at the time were not responding to how dangerous the situation was for gay people and sexual minorities at the time.

“We turned to activism,” Pepper said. “Yelling, screaming, having our voices heard, organizing.”

Staff Sgt. Shaun Brabazon with the diversity and racial section of the Ottawa police said he doesn’t have any awareness that there was a different level of response from the police towards the gay community at the time of Brosseau’s death, but did say relations have come a long way since then.

“It’s fair to say that over the years, the police services as a whole has had to work hard to establish those relationships with multiple communities they serve,” Brabazon said.

Aside from the monthly committee, the police now take part in gay community events such as the annual Pride celebration and the Transgender Day Of Remembrance. Despite this progress, Brabazon said they’re always working to keep communication open.

“It’s not a finite job, it’s an ever-increasing action,” he said.

Ongoing issues were addressed at the recent Feb. 24 committee meeting, where members discussed the relationship between queer youth and the police. Gary Leger, current community co-chair, said at the meeting that youth today fear police would out their sexuality to family if caught in a criminal matter.

The committee is considering creating a sub-committee to engage queer youth and address concerns brought up about confidentiality. The decision was put on hold until the next meeting, when the committee will hear from the police’s youth committee.

The mention of Brosseau reminded Pepper how far relations have developed, and also how much there is left to do.

“I take a lot of satisfaction in that 25 years later we don’t fight whether hate crimes exist,” Pepper said. “The struggle is making sure hate has no place in society.”

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*The following picture is a screen shot from the city of Ottawa’s website, where I was able to find David Pepper’s contact information. I found it by trying a variety of Google searches until I was able to narrow the search down to the David Pepper I was trying to reach. It was extremely helpful as it allowed me to contact my main source.

Pepper Screen Shot 2014-02-26

*This is a report prepared by the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police. One of my sources suggested the document to me, so I Googled it and found the PDF online. The document was helpful in that it allowed me to better understand the police perspective.

OACP Best practices Nov2013 (Text)

Sears Canada posts major losses in third quarter

Business Assignment
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By Micki Cowan

After posting a net loss of $48.8 million in their third quarter earnings, Sears Canada is at risk of becoming the next Eaton’s, according to marketing expert Alan Middleton.

The loss is 123 per cent more than what the company lost in the same period in 2012, when it was down $21.9 million in earnings.

“They’re at a pivotal point in their existence,” said Middleton, an assistant marketing professor at York University. “They’re having to sell off major assets in order to continue business.”

 

Middleton noticed the company was “troubled” back in 2012, but said it’s not yet clear from the financial statements if they are doing anything substantive about it.

He blames the financial struggle on a failure to keep up with online ordering and digital marketing, out-of-date stores and offering too many products and services instead of specializing.

“If we go back 20 years, Sears had one of the best databases and direct marketing operations of any department store. And they’ve just let it slide, where the others have come on strong,” Middleton said.

But he also said their current financial situation is a simple case of bad management.

“All these things look very sensible in the short term – reducing revenue, reducing cost,” he said.

“But you don’t recognize that often a lot of companies, they reduce costs so much that it’s causing an acceleration in the reduction of revenue.” –  Middleton

Sears Canada media representatives said they are unable to comment on their finances until next week due to staff being away.

But in a recent press release, the company said they are “transitioning from a business that has historically focused on running a store network into a business that provides and delivers value by serving its members in the manner most convenient for them: whether in store, in home or through digital devices.”

The transition involves increasing access to a wide assortment of products for members, enhancing member benefits, and making use of data and analytics for targeted sales offers, according to the Jan. 9 release.

Middleton pointed to Hudson’s Bay as an example of a department store that has kept up with the times and been able to handle increased competition from incoming American retailers such as Target and Nordstrom.

He said Sears went wrong by continuing to offer a large amount of products and services, especially specialty goods like appliances.

“Whereas the Bay has gone out of a lot of those products, is focusing on fashion and related products, Sears is still much more an old style department store but with costs higher than specialists like the Brick and Leons can offer,” Middleton said.

In October, Sears announced the future closure of five major stores at the Toronto Eaton Centre, Sherway Gardens, Markville, London-Masonville and at Richmond Centre in B.C.

The third quarter financial statement does not include the $400 million the company received for the termination of the those leases, nor mention what the company plans to do with the money.

The statement did hint more sales may be coming, and mentioned the future closure of its logistics centre in Regina and that the land is now for sale.

“We continue to reduce unprofitable stores as leases expire and in some cases accelerate closings when circumstances dictate,” it said in the release.

Middleton wasn’t convinced the company will try to make a comeback.

“They’re trying to recover now. But as you know they’re selling off stores. The question is how much will they remain active in Canada.” – Middleton

Information on the fourth quarter will be available in February, following the year-end on Feb. 1.

Email: mickicowan@gmail.com
Twitter: @mickicowan

Click on the notes below to see highlighted aspects of the interim report.