On April 19th Finance Minister Carole Taylor revealed that the Office of the Premier contracted with KPMG to investigate unproven allegations regarding former Deputy Minister of Finance, now ICBC CEO, Paul Taylor. The allegations, stemming from an email between two lobbyists, were published by the Globe and Mail on March 30th. Despite repeated questions from the NDP Opposition, the Campbell government refused to reveal the terms of reference for the KPMG investigation; however, Taylor said: "Ten days before the Globe and Mail article did appear, the Premier and the Deputy Minister to the Premier were made aware of this particular e-mail. Immediately, the deputy minister did a review, found nothing wrong, but with extra caution decided to go to an outside firm, KPMG, and asked them to do a full review of the situation. When that review is completed, it will be made available after it's been checked for FOI issues." Ten days before the Globe and Mail article would be March 20th, but documents obtained as a result of a freedom of information request indicate that Jessica McDonald, Deputy Minister to the Premier, did not write KPMG regarding the allegations until March 30th. Maybe it's just a coincidence that the Globe story was published on the day McDonald wrote to KPMG, and maybe not.

Immediately following Taylor's disclosure of KPMG's involvement, I submitted a freedom of information request for any correspondence or other communication between Jessica McDonald, or anyone else in the Office of the Premier, and KPMG. It is important to obtain the documents pursuant to a request under the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act because staff in the Commissioner's Office previously ruled that in a proactive fashion (without a request), as promised by Taylor, is not subject to appeal, hence the government can exclude whatever it wants (not that it doesn't do that anyway).

On June 4th I appealed to the Office of the Commissioner after I was told that due to the large number of records that needed to be searched the time limit for my request would be extended to July 17 in accordance with Section 10 of the Act. Given the extensive questioning in the legislation on the matter, who would believe that the Premier's Deputy didn't have the full file immediately at hand? When no response was received to my June 4th fax, I sent a registered letter to the Office of the Commissioner on June 29th. That produced a phone call from someone in the Commissioner's Office on July 3rd to advise me that due to illness the office had a backlog and hadn't even gotten to opening files on complaints received up to June 4th yet, but that when they got that far they would consider my complaint. It appears that the time limits in the Act are a sham; the government can frustrate its intent by underfunding the Office of the Commissioner so appeals add months to the process.

Notwithstanding inaction in the Commissioner's Office, the Office of the Premier responded with a stack of mostly blanked-out documents together with a covering letter dated June 29th. Most of the blanking-out that was applied to the documents was done under the authority of Section 15 of the Act, which excludes matters which might be harmful to law enforcement, but some exclusion also relies on Section 13, advice to a minister. It is interesting that even the name of the contact person at KPMG was blanked-out with Section 15 as the excuse. Without knowing what is in the blanked-out sections of the released documents, it is impossible to determine whether the Act was appropriately applied, and hence launch an appeal to the speedy Office of the Commissioner. Once the investigation is complete, however, a second request can be submitted for the documents that were originally edited under the authority of Section 15; then we can determine whether the government abused its authority and inappropriately withheld information. That will happen, but there is no time limit for the completion of the KPMG investigation. The only thing you can count on is that the Opposition will once again question the Campbell government on the matter if the Parliamentary Calendar is honoured and the House resumes sitting on October 1st. Failing a Fall sitting, we might have to wait until the February 2008 Legislative sitting before government says anything about the KPMG investigation.