BC Housing Launched a Quasi-Judicial Attempt to Deny me Access to Information. They Failed.

BC Housing Launched a Quasi-Judicial Attempt to Deny me Access to Information. They Failed.

By Sasha Izard
June 25, 2025

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In early February of this year, I wrote the following article:

BC Housing estimates charging an outrageous $1768.50 combined, for 3 Freedom of Information Requests to do with basic financial and other information regarding payments to a registered lobbying organization that represents development and real estate interests. – CRD Watch Homepage

This was part of a series of articles that I wrote and continue to write in regards to Crown Corporations that appeared to be acting evasively in regard to their paid memberships with the Urban Development Institute, a registered lobbying organization on the BC Lobbyists Registry.

The BC Housing file ended up standing out in particular. Although they admitted to being a UDI member unlike a number of Crown Corporations, they only did so over the phone rather than in writing. However, they ended up being the most reticent to provide information when pressed for it after a number of startling revelations made their appearance in the initial and some subsequent FOI requests in regard to their UDI membership.

The mysterious case of BC Housing’s paid memberships in a registered lobbying organization for real estate and development interests the Urban Development Institute (UDI), and how it revealed that a top BC Housing official was pushing for the crown corporation’s membership renewal in the UDI, while they were also simultaneously a UDI director. – CRD Watch Homepage

BC Housing claims records don’t exist regarding a previous membership in a lobbying organization, but at the same time estimates charging me over $1000 to find information about that membership. – CRD Watch Homepage

What BC Housing ultimately did when I pressed for more information about this and other anomalies that turned up in the earlier FOI requests, was to create an absurd sky-high financial barrier to information.

BC Housing is not alone in this. The Crown Corporation BC Assessment (also a UDI member something BCA denied) has attempted to charge a homeowner in Youbou a whopping “$1,930 by BC Assessment just to access records related to his own property assessment appeal.”

Youbou homeowner astounded with huge bill from BC Assessment – Cowichan Valley Citizen

His $1930 bill, like my $1768.50 bill also started with 3 FOI requests to a Provincial Crown corporation.

“On April 1, 2025, Ross submitted three Freedom of Information requests to BCA seeking internal policy records that directly shaped the outcome of his case.

Ross said that, rather than treat him as a private citizen requesting records about his own home, BCA escalated the matter to legal counsel and labelled him a “commercial applicant”, which is a designation typically reserved for corporations.

That label enabled the agency to bypass cost protections offered to individuals under B.C.’s FOI laws and demand nearly $2,000 in fees.”

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Naturally, in regard to the whopping fee estimate of well over $1700 for a combined 3 FOI requests to BC Housing, I filed a fee estimate complaint for review to the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner (OIPC).

Although this was acknowledged by the OIPC, the file sat there for months with seemingly nothing happening in regard to the OIPC’s investigation of it.

Not waiting for the crickets at the OIPC, and the phrase “Justice Delayed is Justice Lost” in my mind, I launched another 2 FOI requests asking for very specific information that should not cost anything more than the 2 initial payments of $10 for each request.

Then after a number of months passed since issuing their sky-high fee estimate for the 3 FOIs, B.C. Housing went so far as to launch a quasi-judicial process to attempt to get the OIPC to deny me access to information. (As if that didn’t seem to be the goal all along with the expensive fee estimates).

Their accusation was that I had infringed Section 43. of the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FOIPPA).

This is Section 43 of the Act:

I’d have to say that being under review for being potentially frivolous or vexatious in requesting access to information from the government was a very Kafkaesque experience, although the end result proved otherwise.

“Don’t be too hasty, don’t take somebody else’s opinion without testing it.”
― Franz Kafka, The Trial

“Asking questions were the most important thing.”
― Franz Kafka, The Trial

Inexplicably, the OIPC “investigator” who seemingly had accomplished nothing in months in determining whether or not $1700+ for 3 FOI requests was an appropriate fee estimate by BC Housing, paused their investigation at this time, noting that the investigation could be cancelled out altogether by BC Housing’s complaint.

Why my fee estimate complaint made months earlier and nothing seemingly happening on it, was now all of a sudden being paused and potentially cancelled out by BC Housing’s complaint made months later had no sense to me. I asked the OIPC, if there was established policy for such an action. The OIPC were unable to provide any, yet continued forward with the pause all the same.

There was another in this case amusingly Kafkaesque situation, in that of the 5 FOI requests that BC Housing was attempting to get the OIPC to deny, the latter 2 of them (the particularly pointed ones in search of very specific information that could hardly be denied) were actually completed and sent to me during the process.

When I pointed out the absurd retroactive implications of BC Housing moving forward in demanding that I not be granted information that I have already received, they decided to go ahead anyway without removing that demand from their case to deny me access to information.

The two completed latter FOI requests yielded a whopping 22 pages combined, making any pretense that they had been administratively burdensome absurd. That is 22 pages in one FOI response. The other FOI response yielded no records whatsoever, raising major questions on its own that will be covered in future writings. I had asked for the record of BC Housing’s first business decision and who was responsible for it to purchase a UDI Capital Region Secondary Associate II membership.

No records turned up in the FOI response, yet in previous exchanges with BC Housing I had received the invoice and proof of payment for the latest one, which was a renewal purchase. How could a “renewal” have been made and yet no record of a first purchase of that specific membership turned up? In previous FOI requests, I had received invoices and receipts for UDI memberships going back many years, yet never had this specific UDI Capital Region Secondary Associate II membership shown up previously in them.

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Among a number of absurd ‘evidence’ put forward by BC Housing that lacked seemingly any relevance to an S.43 complaint, one was of an article that I had written long before I had ever contacted BC Housing, about how the Province of BC has not defined the word “lobby” as a noun in the so-called Lobbyists Transparency Act. Talk about a red herring.

Does the Provincial Government of British Columbia Legally Recognize the Existence of Any Lobby? – Creatively United Community

Another example of ‘evidence’ presented by BC Housing was that I had made a petition (they didn’t mention also long before I had ever contacted BC Housing), that the Times Colonist discontinue its paid membership of the UDI.

Petition · Withdraw the Times Colonist from Development Lobby Membership and Media Partnership – Canada · Change.org

Question the establishment including the media’s relationship to the development and real estate lobby, and apparently that could be at least attempted grounds to have government information limited or denied to a person. What sort of state does BC Housing think we are living in?

With ‘evidence’ like that and much more like it, I sure hope BC Housing didn’t waste any legal fees on their now failed attempt at denying me the right to access information. Wouldn’t it have been much simpler and significantly less costly in time and energy, just to do their job in a timely and efficient manner and complete the FOI requests so that the public could have access to information about BC Housing?

Included in the ruling: “The respondent accuses BC Housing of conflating the lawful expression of opinion, including criticism of public institutions, with vexatious intent.”

“BC Housing’s submissions indicate that it has misconstrued how previous

orders have interpreted the concept of vexatious in the context of s. 43(a). As

indicated above, these orders have found requests to be vexatious where the

respondents had no genuine interest in the requested information itself. In those

cases, it was the act of making the requests that was vexatious.

In this case, it is clear that the respondent is genuinely interested in the

content of the responses to his requests. He uses that content for the purpose of

writing public commentary.”

Whereas BC Housing had months to devise a case to deny me access to information, I had only a week to respond to their completed submission in contrast. Neither BC Housing, nor the initial adjudicator at the OIPC (this was different from the final adjudicator) would allow me any time for adjournment, something that was summarily refused on both occasions.

I had asked twice for an adjournment, as it was a very busy time of year, and I also had family to attend to during this time. I considered adjournment necessary for a fair process, but this fell on deaf ears to the two parties. My response to BC Housing was sent to the OIPC within the last hour before the midnight deadline, and I was exhausted, but the response was strong, and on that note I could finally sleep well that week.

Then, I waited for about a month and a half (90 days is the time allotted for a conclusion).

The highly professional, sound and well-reasoned verdict by the new adjudicator showed that BC Housing had failed on all counts in their bid to deny me access to information.

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Adjudicator: “I do not authorize BC Housing to disregard the five outstanding requests or any future requests from the respondent.”

BC Housing’s S.43 complaint had been shown to baseless. Their attempts to deny me the right to access information from them had been thwarted, and the OIPC would continue forward with their investigation into the fee estimate complaint.

These were the “Remedies sought” by BC Housing:

This was the adjudicator’s succinct response to those ‘remedies’:

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During the hectic time of BC Housing making its S.43 complaint submissions, there was another episode regarding S.43 emerging in parallel.

It involved the District of Sooke, something that I have written a number of articles about including regarding questionable freedom of information responses from the District. Some of my writing on Sooke was also included in the supposed ‘evidence’ put forth by Sooke to attempt to deny me access to information.

Index of articles regarding Sooke – CRD Watch Homepage

The last FOI response that I have received from the District, was similar to BC Housing’s last FOI response file: FOI 292-30-3725.

My FOI request to BC Housing was: “Records of the business decision (and who was responsible for it), that led BC Housing to receive its first Secondary Associate II membership with the UDI Capital Region.”

The response from BC Housing contained no records whatsoever, despite my asking for records showing who was responsible for the specific business decision to renew the Crown Corp’s UDI Capital Region Secondary Associate II membership, something that should be a record retained.

In contrast, Sooke’s FOI-2025-11 response, did not reveal the record responsive to the question: “the decision and who made it and who was responsible, for the District to renew its membership with the Urban Development Institute that was renewed in July of 2024”“

The record that I sought should have fallen under BC the District of Sooke’s records retention and management policy.

The most recent Sooke (staff) decision to renew the District’s UDI membership went against a previous Motion by the elected officials that the elected officials would decide first whether or not to continue the membership after the UDI explained themselves to them prior to the membership renewal.

Who is in charge in Sooke, the elected officials, or District Staff? Staff went ahead and renewed District’s paid membership with registered lobbying organization for development and real estate interests anyway, despite clear Motion from the elected officials that Council would have to make the decision prior to membership renewal.

At the April 28, 2025 Sooke Council meeting, Sooke’s CAO finally admitted that they had been responsible for the UDI membership renewal and that it had been a mistake.

On the agenda that evening was the following agenda item:

After over a year of waiting, the UDI had declined more than once to explain themselves publicly to Sooke Council, this time citing restructuring and staff changes. A unanimous Council decision was made that night to end the District’s many years of UDI membership. Mayor Tait was not present, as it was the night of the federal election and she was a candidate in it.

Sooke Council unanimously decides to end the District’s membership with the Urban Development Institute (UDI) – The UDI Capital Region appears in disarray, it’s Board of Directors list is missing and its Executive Director is no longer listed on the UDI’s website as a member of staff. – CRD Watch

I addressed the council at that meeting on the UDI issue prior to their decision.

There was another item that appeared on the agenda, that I had not originally planned to address, and hadn’t prepared a speech for.

Councillor St. Pierre provided notice of motion in regard to S.43 of FOIPPA:

A number of speakers from the public, one in particular voiced and raised important questions to the council and strong qualms, about this proposal that if passed would be taken to UBCM.

I also weighed in on the subject, asking if Councillor St. Pierre had read the Canadian Constitution, and whether or not he had thought of whether his proposal was in accord with it. (How for example could it accord with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms?)

The council took an adjournment, and St. Pierre walked up to speak to me and another speaker that had voiced qualms about this issue.

I asked the councillor, what was the basis for this motion? Could he point out any specific examples of this issue in Sooke? He could not.

He asked what I thought of the Motion. I responded that I thought it was a terrible motion.

He said that the point of his motion is that he wanted to define the term vexatious. I said, me too, I’d love to have the word vexatious defined, by all means, it should be defined!

I suggested scrapping the rest of the motion then, and instead seek to define the word vexatious. This he proceeded to attempt. As the council meeting continued, he sought to change the Motion to simply define the term vexatious and present that to UBCM.

However, the corporate administrator noted that the motion would be too different from the original motion to change it at the meeting. If he wanted to create a new motion, he would have to go back to the drawing board for it, and present a new motion at a different meeting. Thus the Motion that evening ended as suddenly as it had began, in its tracks. The Motion nor variants of it, seem to have arisen again since then.

Who knew the word vexatious could be so controversial and difficult to define?

The adjudicator in my case however, was very clear on this count:

“BC Housing’s submissions indicate that it has misconstrued how previous

orders have interpreted the concept of vexatious in the context of s. 43(a). As

indicated above, these orders have found requests to be vexatious where the

respondents had no genuine interest in the requested information itself. In those

cases, it was the act of making the requests that was vexatious.

In this case, it is clear that the respondent is genuinely interested in the

content of the responses to his requests. He uses that content for the purpose of

writing public commentary.

The fact that BC Housing perceives this commentary to be harmful in some way to BC Housing, its employees or UDI does not mean the access requests are vexatious under s. 43(a).

In my view, the respondent’s public commentary is an indication that he has a genuine interest in obtaining the information in the records. I am not persuaded that the respondent’s outstanding requests were motivated by bad faith and made to punish, harass or cause hardship.

[22] Therefore, I find that the respondent’s two completed requests and the five

outstanding requests are not vexatious under s. 43(a).

The respondent’s requests are not systematic for the purposes of s. 43(c).

He has made additional requests because he is genuinely seeking the

information. He does not demonstrate a method or plan of acting that is

organized or carried out in accordance with a set of rules or principles. His follow

up requests do not result from information he obtained in his original request, but

rather from information that he did not obtain.”

Conclusion:

At the end of the day, the question must be asked: after well over a half a year – how much gymnastics can BC Housing make to deny access to information? The quasi-judicial attempt failed, and the financial barrier imposed is still under investigation.

Why has BC Housing taken so much effort to prevent access to information about its paid relationship to a registered lobbying organization that advances the interests of its paying corporate members involved in real estate and development?

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References:

Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act