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Bill 9: The Death Knell of Freedom Information by the BC NDP

BC Rewrote the FOI Law at 4 AM. Here’s What It Does


By Arthur McInnis
June 6, 2026


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The BC government has just pushed through a major rewrite of our freedom‑of‑information rules in the middle of the night, moving it closer to law, and almost everything about the process and the substance points in the same direction: more discretion for government, less leverage for the public. The current Information and Privacy Commissioner, Michael Harvey, has tried to present the package as a balance between administrative pressures and access rights, but the actual text of the amendments tells you who wins that balance more often than not. When the independent watchdog’s office is left defending “operational flexibility,” it’s up to the rest of us to spell out what that means in practice.

Bill 9, the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Amendment Act, 2026, was introduced as a “modernization” of the Act. It was driven through the legislature after an all‑night sitting, over the objections of opposition parties and civil‑society groups who warned that the changes would make it harder, not easier, for journalists, community organizations, and ordinary citizens to get answers. The government’s line has been that this is about streamlining and digital service delivery. The details say otherwise.

“Without Delay” Becomes “Without Unreasonable Delay”

One of the cleanest standards in the existing Act required public bodies to respond to FOI requests “without delay.” Bill 9 inserts a single word “unreasonable” and turns that clear obligation into “without unreasonable delay.” That sounds minor, but it transforms an enforceable expectation into a litigable adjective. Instead of “you must move promptly,” the law now invites every late response to be defended on the basis that, in this particular case, the delay was not “unreasonable.” Courts and tribunals will spend years drawing those lines. In the meantime, the practical message to public bodies is that slow‑walking becomes easier to excuse.

“Abusive” Requests and Operational Burden

Bill 9 expands the grounds on which a public body can ask the Commissioner for permission to disregard a request. The amendments add language about “abusive or malicious” requests and those that would “unreasonably interfere with the operations” of the public body. The problem isn’t the idea that truly harassing conduct should be curbed; most people accept that. The problem is that the statute offers no concrete definition of what counts as “abusive,” and it leaves the initial characterization in the hands of the same institutions that have reasons to avoid disclosure. A persistent journalist, a neighbourhood association tracking a controversial development, or a citizen who files follow‑up requests because earlier answers were over‑redacted all fall within the grey zone. Once a request is painted as “abusive” or unduly burdensome, it can be swept aside with far less scrutiny.

More Gatekeeping on “Enough Detail”

The amendments also reinforce the power of the head of a public body to decide whether an access request contains “enough detail” to proceed. On paper, that may sound like harmless housekeeping: of course staff need to know what you are asking for. In practice, it shifts the presumption. Under an access‑as‑default mindset, officials interpret a request generously and search for what a reasonable reader would understand you to be seeking. Under Bill 9’s approach, a request can be held in limbo, or bounced back to you, on the grounds that it is insufficiently specific, and the clock does not run while the public body waits for a “better” version. Combined with the broadened power to characterize requests as abusive or operationally disruptive, this gives determined gatekeepers multiple procedural off‑ramps before any records ever get opened.

The Fee That Still Stands

BC already charges an application fee to file most FOI requests with provincial ministries, and the Commissioner has no authority to waive it in the public interest. That fee predates Bill 9, but the new amendments leave this barrier in place and do nothing to restore discretion to waive fees for journalists, researchers, low‑income requesters or matters of obvious public concern. In a system that already struggles with delays and inconsistent disclosure, the combination of financial friction at the front end and more discretion to reject or stall requests in the middle is not neutral; it predictably reduces the volume and persistence of citizen oversight.

Victoria City Hall Is Watching

For Victoria residents, the most important aspect of Bill 9 may not be what happens in Victoria, the capital, but in Victoria, the city. FOIPPA applies to municipalities, which means the new tools Bill 9 supplies, expanded grounds to disregard “abusive” requests, more leverage over what counts as “enough detail,” and a softer standard on delay, are now available to City Hall as well. Victoria’s Council majority is politically aligned with the provincial government that drafted and defended these changes. That doesn’t automatically mean they will use every new power aggressively, but it does mean they operate within the same political culture that has just normalised this approach to information rights.

Think about what residents and community groups have tried to obtain through FOI in recent years. Requests pertain to development permit files, correspondence on major development agreements, planning emails, heritage assessments and internal briefing notes among others. These are exactly the categories of records that are most vulnerable to slow‑rolling, procedural objections, and accusations of being “abusive” in their volume or frequency. Every new discretionary lever added to the statute is a potential pressure point on those requests. The risk is not theoretical; it is that City Hall, seeing the province reframe access as an operational problem to be managed, will quietly treat Bill 9’s new powers as a template rather than a last resort.

FOI is how citizens verify whether what they are being told is true. When a government chooses to add friction, ambiguity, and discretionary vetoes to that process, it is making a values choice, not a technical one. The province has now made its choice in the small hours of the morning. Victoria’s Council should be pressed, in broad daylight, to state whether it intends to follow that lead or to commit, publicly and in policy, to using every inch of discretion in favour of transparency rather than against it.

Correction

This post has been corrected. Michael McEvoy served a single full term as BC’s Information and Privacy Commissioner after long experience inside the office as an adjudicator, deputy commissioner, and a nationally prominent privacy regulator, including leading work on the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica file. When his term ended he stayed on only briefly in an interim capacity while the legislature finished recruiting a replacement, then stepped aside so Michael Harvey, formerly Newfoundland and Labrador’s information and privacy commissioner, could take over as BC’s new independent FOI and privacy watchdog for a fresh multi‑year term.

Bill 9, the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Amendment Act, 2026, remains a bill before the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia and, as of early June 2026, has not yet received third reading or Royal Assent, so its amendments to FOIPPA are not in force. Public commentary from government, the Information and Privacy Commissioner, media, and legal practitioners continues to describe Bill 9 as containing “proposed amendments” that have passed second reading and moved to committee, not as enacted law, while separate Legislative Assembly pages for earlier, unrelated “Bill 9” statutes (from prior sessions, dealing with other Acts such as lobbying law) show those earlier bills as having passed third reading, which has caused some confusion when searching by bill number alone.

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See also:

Index of articles regarding Law and Bylaw – CRD Watch Homepage

Index of Exorbitant Cost Estimates Provided for Freedom of Information in British Columbia – CRD Watch Homepage

NDP Used to Care about FOI Laws—not anymore, say BC Greens

Newsroom

2026 Bill 9 Weakens Access in BC

BC Government Accused of a Stealth Attack on Freedom of Information | The Tyee

B.C. NDP no longer cares about access to information – Victoria Times Colonist

Petition · That Section 13 of British Columbia’s Freedom of Information Legislation FOIPPA be removed – Canada · Change.org

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

Content from BC Ministry of Housing and Municipal Affairs FOI, deemed a refusal by the OIPC, reveals that in May 2021, the BC government invited UDI lobbyists for confidential consultations about public hearings (reducing them) and delegating some local government decision-making from elected officials to staff. – CRD Watch Homepage

I made an FOI to the BC Ministry of Housing and Municipal Affairs regarding proposed Bill M216. The OIPC granted them a half year extension. – CRD Watch Homepage