During debate on her budget on March 25, Minister of Children and Family Development, Christy Clark, again refused to answer many of Jenny Kwan's questions. One of Clark's colleagues, who was sitting as chair of committee, assisted her by ruling that Kwan's questions were repetitious even though they needed to be repeated because Clark was not answering.

In response to why government is refusing to release the full audit into the Doug Walls affair, Clark launched a lengthy monologue on privacy rights. Clark said "Government has an obligation to protect people's privacy.".

Perhaps the Deputy Premier could encourage the Public Affairs Bureau, a department of the Premier's Office, to show the same respect for privacy that she discussed in her rant. Ann Rees authored an article on the front page of the March 20th Vancouver Sun in which she revealed that certain reporters, political activists and the NDP caucus research staff had their privacy violated when their names were revealed to politically appointed communications staff when they submited a freedom of information request. I was one of the people whose rights were violated. I have responded with a formal complaint to the Office of the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Commissioner.

The problem that Ann Rees identified in her articles goes beyond the violation of the privacy rights of people like me. The government has politicized the freedom of information process and is discriminating against those it sees as its critics. It is rare that I receive an answer to an enquiry within the time limits required by the Act. My experience with the Ministry of Children and Family Development is particularly unsatisfactory; they delayed answering a simple question on how many children-in-care had died, and when they finally posted information to their website they revised the numbers for the last four years. It is shocking that they don't know how many of their charges have died.

My request to the Ministry of Human Resources for a breakdown of how many income assistance clients were excused from the 2 year eligibility rule for each of the 25 reasons allowed by the Ministry is still unanswered although the time limit has expired. It appears that the Ministry contemplated not answering my request since the letter that acknowledged my request said "Should we not respond to you within the 30 days allowed by the Act, you may ask the Information and Privacy Commissioner to review our failure to respond in time to your request." The catch-22 is that such a complaint starts new time limits; as Rees found with the research for her article, it can take a year or more to get answers out of the Campbell government. The closed, secretive, politicized way they run government makes their caucus meetings look relatively open.