Kamloops school district fails to block FOI request, again

The Kamloops-Thompson school district tried and failed to block a contractor from getting access to its own email records for a second time.

The school district claimed the electrical contractor was using access to information laws to repeatedly harass in an “ongoing campaign of unceasing requests,” according to the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner.

An adjudicator tossed the district’s effort to ignore the request, ordering it turn over the emails in question.

It’s the sixth time the electrical contractor complained to the commissioner about the school district’s compliance with Freedom of Information laws in 15 months, but the adjudicator didn’t buy it when the district claimed it was part of a pattern of vexatious and repetitious requests.

The contractor wanted access to emails about the school district’s own procurement practices, which the district argued is part of a failed effort to “uncover a conspiracy of unlawful tendering and procurement practices.”

“I can see that the (contractor) is concerned about what he perceives to be irregularities in the tendering process for publicly funded projects … This concern clearly relates to the accountability of the district for its procurement practices,” the decision reads. “One of the purposes of (the Freedom of Information and Privacy Act) is to make public bodies more accountable to the public.”

The contractor wasn’t named in the decision, but it’s the same company involved in a similar decision last year where the adjudicator similarly ruled against the district’s effort to ignore a Freedom of Information request.

On April 15, the school district was ordered to comply with the request for its own email records.