Shaun Newman Podcast - #789 - Natasha Gonek & Tim Kasprick

Episode Date: February 3, 2025

Natasha Gonek is an experienced investigator known for her work on evaluating the internal protocols of the Edmonton Police Service through Freedom of Information (FOI) requests. Tim Kasprick is a former health information management professional who resigned from the Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA) in 2021, he has spent 20 years working with Freedom of Information requests. Cornerstone Forum ‘25 https://www.showpass.com/cornerstone25/ Contribute to the new SNP Studio E-transfer here: [e-mail] Get your voice heard: Text Shaun 587-217-8500 Substack:https://open.substack.com/pub/shaunnewmanpodcast Silver Gold Bull Links: Website: https://silvergoldbull.ca/ Email: [e-mail] Text Grahame: [phone]

This is Viva Fry. I'm Dr. Peter McCulloch. This is Tom Lomago. This is Chuck Pradnik. This is Alex Krenner. Hey, this is Brad Wall. This is J.P. Sears. Hi, this is Frank Paredi.

This is Tammy Peterson. This is Danielle Smith. This is James Lindsay. Hey, this is Brett Kessel, and you're listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the podcast, folks. How's everybody doing today? Happy Monday. The beginning of February.

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today. You can also go to bow valleyccc.com for all your inquiries. Windsor Plywood Builders of the podcast studio table for everything wood. These are the guys that are, uh, well, we're using all their wood for, you know, not only mantles, decks, windows, doors, sheds, podcast studio tables, maybe even podcast studios. Stop into Windsor Plywood today and say hello to Carly, tell them I sent you. Here in Lloydminster, that is.

Corristone Forum. 2025 is heading to Calgary, Alberta. And, uh, well, I can tell you this. If you were waiting to buy a table with, say, Martin Armstrong, it's gone. If you were waiting to buy a table with Chase, Barber is gone. And there's a few others that are gone. Vince Lanchie, gone.

And, you know, you just got to pay attention. There's other ones going. So if you're waiting, don't wait. Get out there. Buy a table. And we just confirmed Vince Lanchi and Rebecca Coughlinner now. Rod Giltaka, Ben Perrin, Matt Adderett, Chase, Barbara, Kalynne, Foggled, Vince Lanchi, Chuck Prattnick, Alex, Grainner, Tom Longo,

Matt and Armstrong, Chris Sims, Tom Podervich. We got a trade shot going on. Like, all the information is there. Go to substack. It's free to subscribe to. You're going to get all the information. You're going to find out how to, you know, get a trade show or get a booth in the trade show. It's not, you know, it's not a big cost to do that.

Anyways, it's going to be a lot of fun. May in Calgary, hope to see you all there. The new studio. I want you to be a part of it. I got a legacy wall going in. Skills, labor, materials, money. You pick, you take your pick. You just want to come destroy some things.

I'm cool with it. I'll give you a couple of things to rip some things out. We'll have a little bit of fun. I'm offering value for value. A wall with your name on it. Some of the people have taken advantage of that. Nancy Fleming, Donald, Valiant, Ben Shrewdow, Grant and Kathleen Davis, a whole bunch of others.

And Harris Electric just got done a ton of work, as did Guardian plumbing and heating. So, yeah, you want to be in on that? Reach out. We'll see what we can do. And we'd love to have you a part of it. The Lakeland College Women's Basketball protest happening tomorrow. Tuesday, February 4th, 12.15 p.m. to 1.30 p.m. on the Lloydminster campus. Dress warm. It sounds like they're hired extra security.

They're worried about all these college students coming to campus. You can't do that. And it sounds like they're going to make sure you can't get in the building. So, I don't know. That's what I've been told anyways. Maybe I'm wrong. Why don't you show up tomorrow, Tuesday, February 4th at the Lloyd Minster campus. Show some support for the girls and for Coach Chris King. and if you're watching or listening Spotify, Apple, YouTube, well, I think YouTube's back up today.

I hope YouTube's back up today. I think I've been saying this a lot. YouTube after Scott Marzlin removed us, so we haven't been on there. But we should be back on YouTube, I think. Rumble. Make sure to like, subscribe. If you're on X, give us a retweet.

You know, it was Natasha Ghanock saying, you've got to be shadow band on that sucker. Like, I keep retweeting a bunch of your stuff and it goes nowhere. Well, folks, if you're on X, let's get through some of the the barrier, shall we? All right, on to that tale of the tape.

The first as an investigator has worked in regulatory roles within health care, including with the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. The second, a former privacy and access consultant with the SASC Health Authority. Together they break down all things, freedom of information. I'm talking about Natasha Gonic and Tim Casperic. So buckle up, here we go. Welcome to Sean.

podcast. I'm joined by Natasha Gonic, not Gondack, folks, and Tim Casper. Thanks for joining me, folks. Pleasure to be here. Absolute pleasure, Sean. You know, I was, I was chuckling because I, you know, like, you two don't know each other. We've just been sitting here before we started getting to know one another. But I was looking back on my notes, and Natasha was on episode 638. That was back in May of 2024. And then Tim was on in June of 2024 on 666. So as the podcast goes, you were actually relatively close in where I'm at currently, well, where I was at currently then. And one of the things that to bring people up to speed, they should go back and listen to those.

There's a lot of great information in those, too. It's the reason why I reached out to bring you back in. You know, here in Lloyd, among other places, I keep hearing similar sentiment from people who are paying attention. trying to figure things out. It's like, well, they just stone walls. They just go, we're not doing anything. And then they don't show up to meetings or they do show up to me and they don't say anything. And people are cynical, frustrated, insert a bunch of other words there. And, you know, then it comes back to what I know to do, but I actually don't know how to do it. And, you know, Tim always tells me it's super simple. You're overestimating how hard this is. But it's freedom of information.

and you know all these public institutions it's just wild to watch them not release things my conversation with dr gary davidson that was literally this i'm like i'm like what the hs isn't going to give you this stuff just wild to me you two deal with freedom of information on a daily basis you are uh natasha's in alberta tim's in saskatchewan i talked to tom korski and holly don't lots from blacklocks reporter that's what they do all the time they're breaking news all the time And I'm like, the importance of freedom of information, I think Canadians are really starting to grasp how important it is. And I thought maybe we should bring you together

and talk about some of the things going on in freedom of information so people can, I don't know, just grasp the importance of it, the accessibility of how to do it, even the cost, and go back through it all again. Because one of the frustrations on my side is I'm seeing it more and more, it's almost like there's a playbook. If you're a big institution, you just go, well, we don't have to give you anything. We're not going to do that.

And freedom of information should level the playing field, but I'll digress to you too. That's a very good intro, Sean. And what I've noticed is over the last 10 years, traditionally freedom of information has been something that academics or journalists used a lot. And the public, not so much. But as with everything in the information age, the general public is now much more active in making an access request. It's not, you don't need to be a lawyer, you don't need a license or anything special to do it. It's open to anyone. And what we're seeing now is people becoming more and more aware of this process and more citizens, average people who they're not lawyers or they're not reporters,

or just concerned citizens, they're making very good access requests, and that's great to see because the more that the public is aware of this, the more onus there is on the government and the institutions that it has to be compliant with it. If nobody used it,

it would become dormant and we get no value of it. Well, the thing I think is, I go back to, she's no longer with us. So, you know, I interviewed a, constitutional lawyer Carol Crosson this was back in the middle of COVID she since passed away which is you know sitting in this chair is such an odd thing to

have interviewed somebody and then to have them pass away but it's happening more and more I should point out she told me you know like back then if you could imagine the amount I speak against government these days folks was like why would why would you need to you know like the government never does anything wrong I forget how I phrased it but it was something like that and she just laughed and she said you know the government never did anything wrong I wouldn't have a job and I thought thought about that a lot. And one of the cool things about where we sit is like we want change.

We want different things to happen in government. We want transparency. Well, the ultimate tool to transparency, what I think I just heard, and I think what Natasha is nodding her head to, is that any citizen can access it. And we'd be benefited if they would because there's probably, I'm going to assume that like any institution, they start seeing Tim's name come up 17 times. they probably realize what he's fishing for, that there's certain levers they can pull to make it a little painful for Tim. I'm sure we could talk about some of that.

Natasha probably has their own thoughts on that. And the more citizens, everyday citizens, that start doing this, we can probably find out a lot about your community and the government as a whole and what they're doing to us. Absolutely. I mean, I think it's really important to empower the citizens, too,

to understand that, you know, the government doesn't have the privilege of operating in secrecy, and there is confidentiality around some processes that occur there. However, you know, they're a public entity. Those are public servants that are in a position where they have a fiduciary duty to be able to, that they've been afforded, where there's duty of loyalty, duty of trust in those positions. And with that comes transparency because if you are making decisions, no matter what the topic is, if you are making decisions that affect the public businesses, your population, that echo through industries, you need to be transparent about that. And, you know, I've worked in government before,

and I've also worked in areas where as an investigator, you know, my information was subject to either disclosure potentially, even my emails were potentially subject to needing to be disclosed as part of maybe a hearing tribunal process or as part of an investigation disclosure. Those documents, you should be considering what number one you're putting into those pieces of correspondence to others and communications to others and maybe briefing notes and meeting minutes. But reality is you need to answer for that and be able to explain that information and show that transparency around decision-making. And that is what we're missing right now, is that everybody's, you know, shutting the door. They are believing that they don't need to disclose as a public entity or a public employee don't need to disclose that decision-making process.

and that should concern every citizen. Yeah, I'd like to add into what you said. There's an expression in the freedom of information business that's perfect for what you just described, and it's a simple one. And the expression is, sunshine is the best disinfectant. So with, you think of all the billions of dollars,

all the decisions that government makes, if the public gets asked, access and those who work in government know that there will be access requests made, that their decisions, their spending is going to see the light of day. It's not going to be secret. Then they're likely to make better, more ethical decisions because it's going to be seen what you did. You don't have to be popular, but you have to be honest in what you did. And I'm going to make a little for fun example since we're in wintertime. time in snow removal season. Let's say I was the manager of a government facility that had a big parking lot. And normally it costs about $25,000 a year to have the snow removed every year. And now all of a sudden, we got a new snow contractor. And we're going to have some fun with Sean. We're going to make him a wealthy man in an imaginary sense. Now all the sudden, Sean Newman's snow removal company is the new contractor and he's paid $500,000.

They would never do that. They'd 500,000. And all the sudden, you see, I'm not around in winter a lot. I'm in my new condo in Hawaii a lot of the time now that coincided with me being the manager who decided to get the contracts. So I've made an example that it's actually an analogy to things that go on. federally, provincially, all the time. It's a question of do we catch them and stop them in time?

Corruption has existed forever, and I do this to illustrate the phrase, sunshine is the best disinfectant. So if we roll that example back, and if I was the manager who was tempted, hey, I could give Sean this big juicy contract with government money, he'll buy me a condo in Hawaii.

I'll do it. But then before I get to do this, but they're going to do a freedom of information requests on this and we're both going to be caught red-handed. No, let's stick with the $25,000 company. That's an illustration of what this process should do. I've been waiting for full transparency on COVID for a very long time, right? And I speak to Alberta specifically,

but I mean, I'm sure Saskatcham Folk and Manitoba and on and on and on. Is the way to transparency just simply a crazy amount of freedom of information requests and trying to piece together this puzzle? Well, you know, that's part of it. Part of it. I think the bigger part for transparency is probably going to have to come under the guise of an actual investigation where there is the power to force the disclosure of that information.

Because reality is whether that's done in a public inquiry, setting or an investigation where then it goes to court afterwards is that people are getting these disclosures, but there's no centralized database where they're getting uploaded. And I'll give you a really good example, is that the federal government actually does this not too bad. And I'll give them some credit here, is that if you do an ATIP, which is an access to information with the federal government, they actually post on a previously requested site, all the atyps that have been already released. So you can search that database for anything, whether you're looking oil and gas, whether you're looking at health issues, across the board,

their funding, anything. Anything that's been requested, you can go search that database. And then you as a citizen for no charge can request a copy of that. So there's a tremendous amount of information already that has been disclosed. It's just that people don't And then there's no way to necessarily get that information out to the public once you have it. Because you start processing these and you look at them and you go, oh, there's tremendous amount of information. I'd like to summarize that and put it somewhere so people can use it and refer to it and reference it. And there's knowledge of. But that doesn't happen.

And then the provincial governments, you know, you try to do a request in Alberta. and you have to know the exact department you're requesting it from, you know, you already have to have researched a good chunk of information to even know where to find that data. And the previously released ones aren't in a searchable database where you can go and obtain that. And I think that's, that I wish that that would be something that they would fix because, number one, it would save a lot of cost. Some of these freedom of information, if they're more substantial, they're, they, they're allowed to charge extra for them based on the grid. And I think that pay grid has now changed a little bit with the changes to the legislation,

but you're still paying out of pocket for that. So why should people have to pay again to get that information? It would be nice to see that change happen in our province. I'm not sure what Saskatchewan's like. So Saskatchewan also has a fee structure as well. Many requests are free. Some requests cost $20. But your average request for something that,

you'd be interested in. Usually you can get for $20 or less if you ask for a large number of records. The standard currently is if it would normally cost about $100 to request a certain amount of information, the Information and Privacy Commissioner's Office of Saskatchewan has recommended provide that for free. If the amount is larger, sometimes a very large request, and I mean very large. we're talking thousands of pages, they may want a fee above $100. The government institution must give you a fee estimate, and you can decide if you want to proceed with that,

or if you want to narrow the scope of your request to get it down to a smaller fee or maybe to free. Yeah, and that seems to be consistent across Canada with the structure, just what those fees are vary a little bit. provincially in Alberta it's $25 as your base to do a request and then and then you know they have the if it's going to be over I believe it's 100 and don't quote me on this 150 or 125 then they have to give you a fee estimate on that either way they're going to contact you and say do you still want these documents the federal is $5 to put in a request and then if you're looking for substantial

documents. You know, I've made some errors in the past when I first started doing this because it was a pretty steep learning curve. And I put in a request for all the immunization partnership fund stuff. And I made these couple of big requests. And they reached out to me. And the director of the information request department reached out to me. They're like, you know, we did a cursory search. And this is going to be over a million pages. It might take us 10 years to process. And I'm like, oh, that's a lesson learned for me to really narrow in that that search criteria and give them bits and pieces. So it was quite entertaining. But they're excellent to work with.

That's the thing. I think people are often worried about contacting these departments, talking with them. And they'll help you through that process of narrowing it if you aren't sure how to ask that question. So, yeah. Oh, I really like that example you gave because in Saskatch, one, our information privacy commissioner, I'll just refer to them as IPC. They have it titled,

government has a duty to assist because as a citizen, you don't know exactly, you have a topic in mind, but you don't know which filing cabinet or which hard drive or which electronic file it's on. So whoever you make your request

who has a duty to assist you to help you find the records you're looking for, the onus isn't on you to know exactly, which director or which manager or whoever it is has that record. They must help you. Yeah, and I think that's important for the population to know because I think a lot of people are scared to ask that question and they're worried about reaching out to a government department.

And it is, you know, it's a little intimidating to phone some of those offices if you were just, you know, a regular citizen that had never done that before, never gone through that pathway. And those people aren't there to block you. They aren't trying to block you. I sit here as an everyday citizen. And the reason I want to do them, but I get almost paralyzed in a couple of things.

One is you think, I don't even know where to start. Okay. And it's just a simple form. But a simple form doesn't matter because, you know, like your mind plays tricks on it. So it's a simple form. The next thing is like, it's going to cost me a ton of money.

And as I listening to, I'm like, five bucks for federal. Like, I mean, I know that's just the starting gate. I understand the more information it can go higher, but I'm like, that's, that's, I mean, folks in our current environment, that's, you know, like 25 bucks is, you know, a cup of coffee pretty much being a little bit hyperbolic, but I mean, it's getting worse every day. So it's not as bad as I thought. And then I think the important thing that I'm hearing, you mentioned a million documents

and how you have to really narrow in on what are you actually trying to find? because if you can narrow it, it would probably save yourself a bunch of heartache too, because instead of getting a thousand documents, I've been complaining about reading 259 or 69 pages, you know, you get a thousand, it's like, oh man, I've got to sift through a thousand. If you narrow it, you're probably going to get more documents that are relevant to what you're trying to find, yes? Absolutely. And you know, you can get that narrow one. And what I've started to do is you get the smaller request. and as you review that, then you build off and go, okay, I want this, or it might talk about a committee that you want, or maybe it identifies a person or an individual involved in that.

Yeah, and so you start filtering through these and go, okay, there's meeting minutes here, but I'm missing a bunch of the meeting minutes. So once you start kind of going through these documents and processing them, then you ask for a more detailed one. So, for instance, I'm processing this massive 2,000-page at-tip from the federal government. And the meeting minutes I've gone through and just highlighted, number one, presentations that were given in there to those committees so that I can then go get the presentation that was given to them and see what that information was. Or updates from certain departments and some of the pan-Canadian committees that were never made. public. So you can start kind of flushing this stuff out and and seeing where you need other

information and do a subsequent request. And there's also another free tip. You'll know also a theme of Tim. I like free. I like cheap. So I give all those free tips out there. One great free resource and you don't have to worry about who you're going to be talking to. Our IPC office, so our Saskatchewan Information and Privacy Commissioner's office has a toll-free line. Anyone can call them. and you can ask a question. So if you're a citizen and you say, I'd like to do a freedom of information request, but I'm struggling with just how to get started,

you can call their office and say, hi, I'm Tim. There's something going on in my local municipality. I'd like to make a request. Could I talk to you about it? They'll say, sure. Tell me what's on your mind. And they'll give you some tips to get started.

So you don't have to even worry that, ooh, if I contact the municipality, they'll put me on a bad list or they'll... We're already all on the bad list, Tim. Yeah, the bad list there, yeah, I think, as you're right, we're pretty much all accustomed to now being on a bad list, but to take away a little bit of that,

you can call the commissioner's office and just have a chat with them. Well, since you like free, here, I'll give this sound for the people. One of the things that... One of the things that guest when they come in here. Thank you.

Is a silver coin from here. I guess I could probably show the listener too. Or the watcher, the listener. From silver gold bowl. That's right. That's right. That's right. Here, here, listener, watcher.

Very nice. Thank you. Thank you very much. Anyways, anyone who comes to the studio here in Lloyd Minster. I get it. it's not exactly the warmest of destinations. Although Tim driving in from the middle of nowhere, Saskatchewan, I know you're not middle of nowhere,

but you came to middle of nowhere, Alberta, Saskatchewan. So, yeah, one of the ways silver gold bull helps me out in here is given each of the guess a one-ounce silver coin, which obviously they're worth a decent amount these days. Sure. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, excellent. I love silver coal. Not a plug for them. I hate to break it, folks.

It absolutely is a plug for them. You know, but in fairness, you know, I used to be, I'm deviating from freedom of information for a sec. When I first started into this, I listened to a lot of Joe Rogan and still do. And one of the things he never did was bring things into the conversation. But then I started listening to another guy named Sean Ryan. And I really respect how he conducts his interviews. And he started giving out gifts to the guys.

I'm like, I don't know what I feel. like I don't know what I feel about that. And then the longer I listen to it, I'm like, yeah, but if they're really creating an environment where Sean Ryan can be Sean Ryan and go and do his, you know, be what he is, actually it doesn't bother me that much. And so I came full around on the idea and talked to Silver Gold Bowl about it. And once again, they're giving me, among other companies, the ability to bring people like yourself in and have discussions like this that I think are really important. And so it is absolutely a plug, and I'm actually quite okay with it. You know, like they've been a company that's, well, we got Cornerstone Forum coming up in May in Calgary. And there's a ton of people coming.

And they're one of the companies that helped bring it to Calgary instead of being in the middle of nowhere Lloyd Minster. Very good. It's nice to have the support, right? Yes. And that's the thing. It's organizations are also identifying, you know, the challenges in our environment. and the need to support people like yourself. So I think that's amazing.

Well, I don't get government handouts, right? So, you know, at times I'm like, maybe I should just find a way to be that snowplow crew and get $500,000, and then, you know, I could use the bad illegal money to do really good things. But then we're going to foep your contract. And then when you foep it, I'm going to be like,

yeah, I did take $500,000, I didn't do the work. It's just an ethics violation. slander me all you want. I'm going to go interview all these people and do a bunch of good. Anyways, it probably doesn't work that way, but regardless, I totally understand. What is it that, I'm curious, what, what are you two working on right now when it comes to freedom of information? Are you allowed to talk about that? Do you, does it, is it like a hidden in secrecy? So mine's for sure out in the public because I'm in court and anyone can come and see me in court. In Saskatchewan, if you put in an access,

request and you're expecting to get records and you don't get very many or sometimes you don't get any and the government says well there's an exemption that those records you want they exist but there's an exemption of the legislation that prohibits us from giving them to you so no records for you i'm quoting a little signfeld episode there if you can kind of guess paraphrasing a bit you have one other options to sketch when the privacy commissioner can review the case they can recommend that I should get the records. The government should follow the commissioner's recommendations, but he can only recommend he can't enforce them.

So I've had the experience where the commissioners recommended, yes, I absolutely should get the records, but the government entity has said, we're not going to follow the commissioner's recommendations. We're still not giving the records to you, Tim. Because it's a recommendation, and we don't have to abide by a recommendation. Correct. So there's one last step in our legislation.

You, the applicant, whoever filed the request, can go to court, court of King's bench and sue them to get the records. So the government entity that's withholding the records from you must prove to the court that whatever exemptions they applied are indeed valid. That's a big step. I don't recommend you do that on your first access request. But here's one of the ones I'm working. I have two in court right now.

And the reason I'm doing this is for two reasons. One, I want the records. The commissioner says I should get the records. I want them. There's no reason why I shouldn't have them. But there is a growing problem, and our commissioner has talked about this, of non-compliance with his recommendations in Saskatchewan.

It's going to take government losing in court. to change that tide. So I'm the guy who's trying to change that tide because if they start losing in court and losing and losing and losing going on a real big losing streak, then I'm hoping two things. We're going to see more compliance.

And two, that our legislation gets updated, as most provinces are, where the commissioner has order-making power, where you have to follow his rules. recommendations. So right now I'm in court fighting Sask Power to release the costs of the small modular nuclear reactors that they want to build an Sivan. For those of us in Saskatchel, we've probably heard lots this summer of Sass Power's open houses to hear more about SMRs. I've gone to them. That's great. But there's just one question you can't ask at those open houses.

how much does this nuclear reactor cost? We're going to have to pay for it on our power bills. How much does it cost? And you get the answer, we can't tell you that. So I'm in court right now. You can't... This is my frustration. Everybody keeps hearing my frustration probably starting to...

It's like, why wouldn't they... Why can't they tell you the number? Or do we, can we at least have the discussion of why they wouldn't give you the number? Did they not know it or they don't want you to know it? Or both. There's close to 1,000 pages of records that detail the cost of the reactors. And they've cited a whole bouquet of exemptions. The commissioner actually said they took a shotgun approach to the exemptions.

They just fired their shotgun of exemptions and just they way over did it on how many exemptions. They're hoping one of them sticks. So fire them all. So I'm in court arguing that those exemptions are not valid, and the commissioners already explained why they aren't. So we can get the costs revealed because if we're to make a decision to contemplate going nuclear, these reactors are only to replace the coal plants. They're not to give us extra.

We have 300 years worth of coal. They're all paid for, our coal plants. How much are we going to have to pay? pay for a green new deal to get a nuclear reactor. I saw a thing from the office the other day. What was this on? Where it's talking about, it's making fun of Carney. I have a plan.

Okay, what's the plan? Well, you've got to hire me first, and then I'll tell you the plan. And they're like, well, this is an interview. Can't you just tell us the plan? Well, no, you got to hire me before I'll tell you the three-step plan. This is what this is my mind. We can't tell you, but trust me. me it's good for you no government if there's one thing we don't trust anymore is that anything you

say is good for us so letosh if i was a real estate agent if i got a house for you're looking for a house you want a house it's a great house it's got everything you want it's got the bed it's got the floor oh yeah it's how much it's polluted it's a great house it's a great house you just sign here and we'll take care you you pay for it and once you get it you'll begin paying for it and voila you'll then find out how much it costs you might not you You might just, you may never know how much it costs. Just keep paying. Yeah, you just keep paying the rest of your life.

You don't know, right? Isn't, you know. It's, wow. Forgive me. Maybe I'm wrong on this, but would you say that every citizen of Canada should try their hand, one freedom of information request just to see how the government reacts? Wouldn't that be a big eye? Because I like, I listen to starting.

I'm like, the thing is I sit in this chair all day long and interview people and I just, my brain at times is like, I just, what are I supposed to do with this? And I think probably if every person did one, they'd, A, find out how easy it is, how it didn't break the bank. And then they might see how the government reacts to a citizen asking to see something and whether or not they're like, oh yeah, here it is. Or they're like, no, we can't give you the cost. That's not allowed. Yeah, and at least Alberta isn't as bad as Saskatchewan, our Privacy Commissioner's Office, so if you ask for a review, so give you an example, based on the Emmettin Police Service, Freedom of Information Documents, there was a lot that wasn't provided, but there was also some information in there. And I think you and I maybe touched on it in our interview was the masked up program that the city of Emmettom was doing this AI surveillance. for mass compliance that brought about behavioral nudge messaging to the population.

And they were scanning people's faces and stuff downtown. So I wanted to get more about that little project that the city of Eminton had initiated through this odd research department. And please don't skip over it because if people are new to the show and they haven't listened to anything, Natasha, it's probably good to just explain what the heck you're talking about. Okay. So as one of the projects that I was picked up and hired to do by the Eminton Police sworn and civilian members was to process a very large freedom of information request on their employer's pandemic response. And so we got 8,717 pages of documents, emails, briefing notes, procedures, policy, communication, international communications. webinars they did with Anthony Fauci, all types of direction that they got from internal and external.

And then we're still fighting to get a review. So it's with the Privacy Commissioner now to review the documents they didn't release. But within those documents, there was this program that was put forward to the Emmettom Police Service called Masked Up, where they were going to surveil the population by walking around with briefcases that had AI facial scanning technology in it and surveil a set grid of downtown Emmington and have screens in those areas that would pop up a behavioral nudge message. So if you had your mask on and it was up and proper, you would get some type of applause or whatever. whatever they had scheduled into it. And then if your mask was kind of down or around your chin, you would get a reminder on how to how to wear your mask properly and why that was so important.

And if you didn't have one on at all, there would be a message related to that. So this was a whole program put in place that was not disclosed to the public. And there was no privacy assessment on it because the city of Eminton determined that they didn't need one. So I wanted to get the documents. And so I put in a freedom, I know, our, our, I think you didn't need one, eh? Yeah, you're probably going to have some comments on this one. So in November of, or sorry, December, I believe, early December of 2023,

I then submitted a privacy request. Now my date could be a little bit off there. But in 2023, I put in this request to get the information around that. I wanted approvals. I wanted meeting minutes. I wanted budget. You know, who the decision making sign off, the implementation of the program. I wanted a privacy assessment if they did one and just didn't disclose it.

And so it went through and it took them a very long time because they sent it to an internal review process within the city of Edmonton. I'm like, I'm on a flagged list now. And so they took that, though. they finally released a little bit of information to me. And I hadn't just, you know, let them know that I already had the presentation from the police because I wanted to see what was going to come through. And that presentation wasn't in there. And I'm sitting there going, wow. So I let them know. I said, look, I have a presentation that was given to the Emmetton Police Service with a question to answer that details this program. And that wasn't in the package of information you gave me. It must

be in the redacted documents and the withheld documents. I'm like, can you go back to them? So this is the thing. If you do an information request and you don't get everything you ask, the Privacy Commissioner's Office in Alberta is going to ask that you try to resolve it with that department and with that public agency. So they're going to want to see that you've gone back and forth with them to try to get further disclosure.

So don't ever hesitate to go back to them and say, you know, I think there's more information. there or I don't think you've provided the information I asked for and have that discussion with the freedom of information and access to disclosure office that you're dealing with. So in this one I went back to them, told them what I had and they went back. And again, about another five, six months later, I finally get a disclosure. Well, this time, they disclosed a lot more information to me. I got meeting minutes. I got their discussions.

on top of it. And then on top of it, they provided me the presentation. So I went through it line by line, because that's the type of person I am, found out they weren't the same. So now I have a presentation that was given to the Emmington Police Service,

and I have a presentation that was given to somebody else or modified or altered. What do you mean? Explain that to me. The documents aren't the same. So they, They said, well, here's the ones, and they thought they had included the Emmton Police Service presentation that was given, but the documents don't align. They're different. Slightly different, but they're still different. So I still didn't get full disclosure. So now it's with the Privacy Commissioner's Office to review the disclosure at this point. I just filed for a review, and I'll wait, because that offices, I would say they are severe.

understaffed. If you're sitting somewhere and you just stepped into this thing and you don't realize how, like I think at times the bullet train I've been on, let alone anyone else, of trying to understand what's going on. And you understand the report that was just least released from Alberta. And, you know, the efficacy of pretty much anything done in COVID in Alberta for the entire time was not great. And then you stack on, we're going to use nudger units.

and all the stuff you just rattled off to make sure your mask is working, which the mask was garbage to begin with. You're like, we went to, wow, I mean, it's just, it's so nefarious. I don't even, I don't even know how to explain it other than that. It's just, once again, it's like you're working on a puzzle, and this is probably a terrible analogy, but we'll see how it goes. And you think it's this little puzzle, but actually all you did was construct one little piece, but it was a thousand little pieces to make one little piece of this giant puzzle.

and they're all starting to just get put into a giant puzzle now, I think, that could probably be a bigger piece of a bigger puzzle, because all these things seem to be, you think they're not connected? And you're like, oh, you're just a conspiracy theorist, Sean, you got that. And then you, like, you listen and you're like, no, don't think so. Like, the Fauci part with the Eminton Police Service, I don't know if you told me that. And now I'm like, well, did you get to watch where he's talking to them? No, the Emmett and the Emmettin Police leadership and people from their pandemic committee attended a webinar that was held by Anthony Fauci and a few other officials just online.

They did this webinar for specific for law enforcement and the vaccines for law enforcement. And in that presentation, and this is well documented in my report and everything. So Anthony Fauci was talking to them about the implementation of the vaccines in their workplace and how they, you know, they don't prevent transmission. There's no long, he actually talks about no long-term information on these vaccines. This is January of 20, January 6th, 2021. this is before these rolled out to the public. And he was talking to them about ensuring that they stagger their staffing due to adverse events and side effects from the vaccine so that they didn't have shortages.

There's no pit in hell deep enough for that. But this information, when people say that people didn't know, that they weren't given, this is, they knew. And they were told this by people like Anthony Fauci and others. That information was there. And that information was given. And subsequent to that webinar, there was a briefing note put out, I believe it was January 10th, 2021, by one of the deputy chiefs at the police service, indicating the need to stagger staffing because of more side effects, especially after the, the second shot. So this is, this is January of 2021.

They did not put in a vaccine requirement into their workplace or at least disclosure until the fall of 2021. So that, you know, the knowledge level there for them to begin even asking questions. Well, what kind of side effects? Are we about to cause whole units to go down? What are we about to do to our police forces or our frontline workers or? And how about the human? themselves who's getting this jab.

Yeah. Like that should have raised flags all across the board to say, well, wait a minute, operationally, what might that do to our law enforcement? But no, that's not it. I mean, I was, I don't know how much I've told this story, but like, yeah, I was working in the oil field at the time. Baker Hughes, I don't think I can get in crap for saying that, but that's what I was working for.

So anyways, it doesn't matter, I don't think. And we sat in a Western Canadian call. This would have been in May, I believe, of 2020. Okay, so March, everything gets shut down. You have all March, all of April, and then it's towards the end of May. It's almost been three months. And in the first month, Sean was freaking out. We're all going to die.

But the second month, I was looking around going, hmm, I thought we were all dead by now. And by the third month, I'm like, okay, well, we must be going back to work here right away, right? So we sat in this meeting. And they put on a big giant screen, right? We're on a Zoom call or whatever. The stages of how we get back to working in person and the last stage was a vaccine. That was in May of 2020.

And that's an oil field company. They already knew. And you're like, when you think about that, you're like, it was all the signs were sitting there for us to just, you know, like I think of the nudge units. I think of all the stuff that's continued to come out. It's like you were up against the world, the world's machine, not not. one little machine and some nefarious little politician is like, no, no, this was, this was on a grand scale, continues to be on a grand scale, you know, like when I see how different institutions and governments operate by putting up this wall, nope, we don't have to answer that.

I think even Saskatchewan, there's probably people that don't want the privacy commissioner to have the ability to force them to release things. And they're probably saying, you know, if you do this, and then we're not going to save the planet through green agendas like nuclear energy, which is going to help reduce coal emissions and on and on it goes. Like, to me, that's what that sounds like. No, I probably sound like the conspiracy theorist to some people, but I'm like, yeah, I just watched RFK get asked if he's a conspiracy theorist.

I don't know if you guys saw that. It was great. And he's like, I mean, yeah, I've been called lots of things. And, I mean, what's the difference between a conspiracy theorist and somebody telling the truth? You know, three, six months, something like that. I think, man, chances are, that's probably where we're going to find out about the nuclear power plants in Saskatchewan. Is there a great idea?

Yeah, but you have coal. And they cost us zero to build because they're already there. Yeah, that's, I think now if the worst you're being called as a conspiracy theorist. Oh, no, it's a bad you honor. You're, they've got nothing on you. If that's all they can dig up. And with these SMRs, the particular nuclear actor they want, this exact model, I asked them at the open house, where is it that one of these has already been built?

Well, we have, they're not built yet. so you can't go and touch and feel one. But, well, we put on these VR goggles that they gave us and they looked really great. So you played a video game of the reactor you want to build that you maybe don't even know it works because you actually can't go touch and see one working, but you put on VR goggles that looks really great.

I'd like the records, please. Why, if we're building some, something that does not yet exist. I mean, Ford has built lots of vehicles, but not every model is a great one. Wouldn't you want to see their newest, greatest model work? Didn't we just spend billions of dollars because EVs were going to be the way of the future? And didn't a whole bunch of those places just go out of business? Didn't, didn't Eminton buy all those beautiful buses because it was going to be the way to save the world?

And aren't they regretting that decision? And now other cities are going to do the same thing because they can't seem to learn a lesson. Didn't shoppers drug mark just put a bearded man on their advertisement after Bud Light and Victoria's Secret? And how many others had to learn that lesson? And then you're still doing it. You're like, what is this world? We're governed by not even children. Children would get this wouldn't work.

This is utter stupidity. Yeah. And one thing I'll just jump in with and it touches on things we've all, I think all three of us have mentioned. one easy win you get with a Freedom of Information request is to see what type of reaction you get from the government agency that you're submitting it to. Because sometimes you do put in an easy request. It's for the snow removal contract.

Basically, here it is. Oh, good. You know, maybe they could charge a little less. Maybe that's about right. You're not too suspicious. Okay, I guess that's what snow removal costs. Big parking lot. I'm thinking of the $25,000

one, not your $500,000 nest egg, Sean. But when you get stonewalled and all sorts of odd things start happening and they fire out all kinds of exemptions, now you've hooked a big fish. You haven't got to pull the fish into your boat yet, but you know underneath the water, there's a big fish. It's kind of like getting removed off YouTube

before bringing on certain guests, Tim. You know, like, oh, I might be over the mark on this one. And folks, if you are just listening today and you've been wondering where I've been on YouTube, I still believe I'm not there right now, uploading new stuff. I'll hopefully be able to upload it right away. But Scott Marsland for talking about some different, what do they call it, medical misinformation on that one. So, yes, I know about being over the mark ever so slightly, and I can imagine freedom of information when you get certain reactions is rather curious.

That was actually a perfect segue. And we didn't even plan that into an example of that. I used my AI case to give you a nudge there. Did you? I love it. So I'm going to give you a good one here, Sean, because it was something that came up that I had wanted to look at after doing the Emmington Police stuff,

was seeing in there that there was a lot of meetings going on with the chiefs of police, special crown prosecutors, government officials, municipal provincial officials, as they corresponded and they were, you know, planning and doing all the things that we would expect them to do during a crisis for our province. You know, that's not unusual, but they were having conversations around, you know, getting voluntary compliance in the population and those types of issues that were flagging for me because they knew it wasn't going to stand up in court. So I always wanted to find out, well, what was happening in the Crown Prosecutor's Office?

So then I start to do a little digging and find out that Dina Hinshaw's brother was head of the policy unit with the Crown Prosecutor's Office. And so I traced the family tree and found confirmation that that was the case and determined, you know, how he had moved through that department. And yes, during COVID, he sat as a director of the policy unit for the Crown Prosecutor's Office. Okay, well, let's see what, you know, let's see what the correspondence was, because there's direction that's going into, obviously, the courts, nobody's handling or prosecuting anything. I wanted to see now that raises something, you know, raises a flag for me. And so I put in a Freedom of Information request to both the health. side for her correspondence to that policy unit, to her brother, just to see what that was.

And then to the Justice Department side to that, to get disclosure, what was direction to the court? I wanted policies, any briefing notes, any meeting minutes, any correspondence between that office and her or his office and her. And, you know, I finally get a receipts. from them. They didn't take that long to deliberate. And I brought it with me today because it says in consideration of the information available and the requirements of the FOIP Act, justice has decided not to give you access to the records you're requesting. Nothing. They wouldn't even give me a policy. They wouldn't give me anything redacted. Zero. And they claimed that they were withholding the disclosure in accordance with the following.

Disclosure is harmful to law enforcement. Disclosure is harmful to intergovernmental relations, and the disclosure is considered advice from officials. Yeah. Yeah, they're showing a lack of eagerness on this to provide it to you. Yeah. So this is now sitting with a review with our Privacy Commissioner's Office because I did go back to them and I said,

would you consider, like you didn't even get it. give me anything that was redacted or any information. I mean, I'm used to getting documents back and you have pages blacked out or sections blacked out. And, yeah, and there's maybe some legal advice that's in there or some advisement that's redacted, but to give nothing. Yeah. The getting nothing's a sign you've hooked a big fish.

And I'll explain what I mean by that is I'll just give an example. Let's say they've got 100 pages of records. and it's really hot stuff. But there's maybe only five pages that would qualify for an exemption. You have to provide the other 95 that don't have an exemption. And when I say exemption, sometimes there'll be a lawyer who says, this is my legal advice too. So a lawyer giving legal advice, they're not obliged to provide that.

But there's lots of, and the rest of the record, it's disclosable. anyone who works in the processing of access requests that you know that in your sleep okay i take out the five pages that i can't give but i release the other 95 that's just a normal day at the office so when they gulp hard and say no don't give anything they've they've almost lost their senses because every day you redact a little line on a page and release the rest of the page or maybe there's 100 pages but five you have to redact and you have to cite why. So when they go to that no, we don't give them anything, there's a lot of fear and panic in that response. So you've stumbled across them.

You haven't got the record yet, but you've stumbled across something big by that reaction. And Hinshaw and having, you know, you think of how many people know who Hinshaw is. but not realizing there's a family member connected in a very important position or a very important office, or maybe both, and what could have been said between the two. Yeah, and he sits as senior Crown Council now. So, yeah. And especially when they're in charge of a direct, like in a position of director of policy unit. Now, I'm not saying there's something nefarious there, but the fact that you just shut down all documentation coming for with zero transparency. about what that was on decisions that not only caused tremendous harm to the population,

people were fined, people were put in jail, people are fighting court battles over the direction that's occurred here. I'm going to ask a really dumb question. The position he has, that office, what did they do through COVID? That's what I'm trying to find out. But they would have been in the enforcing, side of what came down from government, right? Yes, the Crown Prosecutor's Office.

So anything that is a prosecution, whether it's criminal or civil charges, they would come through their office. So I'm just, I want to paint this picture and then I want you to poke holes and make sure my brain's got it right. She really, Chief Medical Officer is supposed to say, hey, this is what we're doing, although it's been proven that actually politicians were doing that, correct? and that's where you get the Ingram case, correct? That's correct.

I'm trying to piece this all together, folks, and I can hear people being like Sean, speed it up, we're already here. So you have her bringing things out, although it's the politicians, regardless, they bring things out. And then this connection is the people when they find the pastors for staying open with their church, it goes to this office, and then they uphold the fine. And so what you're pointing out is there's a family connection here. there was correspondence between the two

and I would like them. Potentially correspondence. Well, I mean, something's there if they're not giving it. Yeah. I mean, isn't that what we're talking about? I mean, I can speculate as much as I want because I'm not part of the,

I can just look at what you've said and I'm like, well, point out holes in my thought. I'll jump out into that point because when you get a blanket, no absolutely nothing. Like records exist. They're not saying there aren't records, but we're not giving you access

as to any of it. Who's to blame you now for speculating? You weren't speculating anything. You want to see the records, find out what actually happened, but we're not giving you anything, absolutely nothing. Now aren't we forcing you to speculate? Because we're giving you absolutely nothing. Well, this reminds me of Lakeland College.

I don't know if I've told you both this story, but Lakeland College here in Lloyd Minster, removed the coach of the year national champion coach of Canada for college, basketball, women's basketball. And they have stonewalled and said nothing. And to the point where now there's freedom of information going in, there's a protest happening, uh, tomorrow as this releases Tuesday, when will that be February 4th, I think, if memory serves me

correct, at 12 o'clock at the Lakeland College. So if you're just hearing it for the point, first time there you go um and i don't i'm i want to have the full story i want them to come in and share the side of the full story and now i've been in on a board meeting where they won't even address it and i'm like this is really strange even seeing their faces when uh when uh when uh i showed it to chris the deal uh suggest that you know like said on the zoom like nobody's going to talk about all the questions i asked you're not even going to address them and they all looked at them kind of like sheepish silly and then uh okay everybody's going to leave this meeting

can go to in-camera or whatever they call. I was like, that was strange. And when people start acting strange, all you can do is speculate, right? I just sit here, I don't know. I'm just trying to make sure that I'm not missing a big thing. And you can be like, oh, no, no, no, Sean. Stop right there. This is what we're talking about.

Like, because at any point, I can have this wrong. I'm perfectly fine with having it wrong. I want to make sure I am understanding the full spectrum of the story. But it feels like more and more public institutions where it's publicly funded. That means it's my money going into it as much as yours or yours are all running under the same playbook, which is like, no, just stonewall. Don't give it to them. No, we'll deal with the ramifications and we'll just draw it out for as long as we can and see if they go away.

Yeah. The concealment of information is, you know, as an investigator, that raises a flag. You know, as soon as people are concealing information or perceived to be concealing it, There's also a lot of deletions going on. So, you know, that's another aspect of why it's so important for us to get the information now is to be able to have it before it's lost. And so concealment of information is an automatic flag for me. And the fact that I got this type of response back.

So there's something to hide, which means you're guilty of something. That tells me that there is definitely information in those documents, direction given to the courts, policy that was developed, briefing notes, communication, whatever it might be, that was not necessarily above board and that they know has caused harm. You told me when we first sat down that we got to talk about the people underneath the leaders, like that layer. And I'll be the first to admit, folks, I'm going to look right in the camera, I'll be the first

to admit that I am pretty hard on our leaders. I'm talking premiers. I'm talking prime ministers and on and on. I see them as the, well, they are. They're the leaders. So under their leadership, problems are allowed to persist, and maybe they don't even know about them. So I'm talking and hearing in Alberta about Daniel Smith,

and I've been vocal about several different things. I also like to point out I've been vocal about some of the wins she's had because I think at times she is fantastic. Other times I'm like, why can't we just speed this up? Why can't we just kick this straight in the, as my kids would say, the nanoscuars. But regardless, you know, like, I think this is, you two have a really interesting perspective

of the layer beneath the leaders, this bureaucracy that's entrenched. And maybe we could talk about that for a few minutes. You know, when you're trying to get through some of this, I don't know, it just seems like it's self-preserving, you know, like they're trying to protect themselves, even though they work for us and I'm, you know, I can go on and on. I'm going to speak to a different part of the role I had with the Saskatchewan Health Authority

that's going to illustrate your point. In addition to processing free of information requests, I was also tasked with helping keep patient information private and confidential. So in other words, no one should look at your medical record unless they have a need to know to provide a service to you just because you know I happen to be in the record room and maybe I know this Sean Newman guy if I just go to the end section maybe we'll just have a little look my job was to catch that person and punish them if they did that but here's the point I want to make if a patient suffered a

privacy breach and also on our privacy commissioners with website, not only will you read about free of information requests, you'll read about privacy breaches and how his office investigates those. If a patient has had their health information breached, and there's some disgusting examples out there that I won't illustrate, but I think everyone can imagine. There's some disgusting things people can do if they get the hands on your medical information and use it for nefarious. I know you don't want to talk about it, but I got to, my brain doesn't go to the disgusting

place. What would people use with my health information? Well, I'm going to illustrate one that made a commissioner's review. I'm not trying to make a soap opera here, but here we go. Well, I'm asking you for it because I'm like, I actually don't understand what you would do with someone's file. Because it's going to sound like I'm making it up, but this happened in Saskatchewan. All right.

One of the common reasons for a privacy breach is. the love triangle so two people like the same person and they're vying to be the winner there can only be two winners in a love triangle of three so you have to get rid of the third person somehow so how about if you worked in the lab went into their file and added some false STD information and then got that spread around. So if there was two people vying for the affection of someone and now you interject, oh wow, so do you really like that person with the STD? And then sometimes that's even false. In this case it was. And now that person has to try and retract that they don't have this SDD,

but of course, once this room is out the door, there's some very nasty things you can do with someone's health information. One of the other things that happened during the humble bronco tragedy, and this was on the commissioner's website as well, very disappointing how many people decide to go into the files of those hockey players to find out every gruesome detail they could, just because they could. So in Saskatchewan we have an electronic health record where you can actually trace who's viewed your record. So if it's an electronic file, we always know who viewed that person's record.

So the health authority can audit those records and catch people and punish them. But the point I was going with this is when a patient has experienced a privacy breach, they feel very violated. even when we catch the person and we punish them, while you're going to need health care in the future, it is very, very difficult to ever regain the trust from that patient in the system. And similarly with the access requests that are being denied and information not being provided, that is eroding the public's trust in our institutions.

And when you lose somebody's, trust, you just try and get it back. You probably won't. This is very serious what they're doing by eroding the public's trust. They say, oh, well, you know, our public institutions aren't respecting. Well, why do you think that might be? It's not a default thing that you get. You have to earn and preserve and maintain trust. And if you mess it up, you probably won't get it back. And then what are we left with? so when there's meetings and stuff's being covered up well not only is the public going to lose trust in that institution

now you start thinking are there any institutions I can trust or are they all like this starting to look like all of them uh what was punishment for going into somebody's file you could lose your job okay I'm just curious because you know like I I I look at federal politics and ethics violations and, I mean, Finkelstein literally said, it's exposure. That's what the punishment for a politician was. And I was like, great. So they walk away with their retirement nest egg and they get their name ran through the month. They don't care. I just don't think they care. Well, the crown has the ability to put forward charges too. So look at the Thomas Dang privacy violation where he went into the vaccine database to try to

try to, you know, scrub through and find certain people's information into, in that vaccine record. And, you know, he set his device to hit. I apologize. Once again, could you give the background on the dang time frame and incident and everything else? Oh, time frame. Well, I'm not 100% on the time frame. It was post-vaccine, proof of vaccine.

So kind of that fall of 2021. In their 2022. And this has been prosecuted through the courts so people can look this up if they choose to. He was a NDPMLA for the Eminton region. And actually, he was my MLA. So that's why I was following it a little bit. and he is an IT is his background. And he set up, must have been some type of program to try to access health records to see vaccination status of other people.

And I believe it was 1.7 hits to the system to try to access. And he was denied the information. But the RCMP came out and indicated that there. were enough charges for criminal breach of the information. And it went through, and he did get fines, but he, I don't believe there was a criminal charge. He got fined under the Privacy Act and the Information Act. So there is a little bit of teeth in that legislation.

However, I don't know how many cases actually make it that far into the court system. I mean, when I was investigating healthcare professionals, privacy breaches were common. And sometimes there's fines from the colleges, you know, suspension of permits in some of the most egregious cases, retraining, you know, just different levels depending on what the breach is. A lot of the privacy breaches that we would see in the health care professional side was because, you know, they're checking out their friends, their family, their Facebook friends, their date, somebody they might go on a date with and all type of it. And I'm, and that might seem extreme, but somebody, forgive me. Which king is a king? I think it's one of the kings in the Bible that sends off a girl he's in love with, a husband to the front lines.

What is a king? Oh, that was King David. King David, thank you. Right? And so you're like, nothing's new under the sun, folks. I mean, it's just a newer version of something that is biblical. So, I mean, I just can't imagine. I don't know.

I guess I'm married with kids and I'm like, Why would you do that? I have the answer. I have the answer. When you, especially now, I'm going to speak to our electronic medical record. Used to be, if you were, if this was 1980 and you wanted to find sounds record, you had to go in this big cavernous record room and go through all the files and get a ladder and climb to the top. Maybe you'd do that. Maybe you wouldn't.

But it took a lot of work. Right now, if I've got 30 seconds. I can look up whoever I want. It's so easy. And now that we're so, and now we advance to the age of, we've got our smartphones. If there's anything I wonder about,

I just do a search, I find it. We're in the habit now. If I want to know something, I go to a computer, I go on my phone, I quickly do a search, I find it. Those habits don't stay at home

when you come to work. However, employees are to know that those information systems that in our medical facilities, they're audited. So even though I'm all by myself, nobody's here,

the computer is keeping the log that I'm looking up Sean Newman. And I'm not providing any service to them. And I seem to be doing this regularly. And I get caught and I get called in. And they show me, why were you looking up Sean Newman?

I don't know. is usually how the answer starts, but then they dig deeper. But we are so curious now, we're so used to using electronic devices to find information. I think that's what's driving a lot of the breaches we see now. And it is such a strong urge to do this. There is an auditing firm that gives this statistic. They say once employees know they're being audited,

You get almost no privacy breaches. You catch the first couple, make an example out of them. You're not going to have problems for a long time. Except, we cannot guarantee full compliance by your staff. We can guarantee something else. Every year, you're going to have to catch and punish a certain number of your staff. We can pretty much guarantee it because we provide auditing services all over the world. and there are such, and I'll give the love triangle again,

there are some employees and you have them, it's just a question of how many you have and how quickly you catch them, that no matter what the consequence is, they know they're going to get caught, but they will snoop. One case that made a lot of news years back was when Britney Spears went into a hospital,

for something that happened. The building that she went into went wild. Every floor that had a computer was looking up, Britney Spears, or spared like wildfires. She was in doctors, so they had to punish a lot of people. A little bit of time went by.

Britney Spears was back in the hospital again. They caught a bunch more people again. They all had to see what was going on with Britney Spears. So the point of that is, when you have important information, you have to audit it, you have to keep it safe. When you have freedom of information, you have to be as transparent as possible, cooperate with the public as much as possible, provide, there's a lot of records you can provide. Otherwise, you're going to lose the public's trust and you're not going to get it back.

How long have you both been doing this, the freedom of information? Well, for me, doing the actual requests varies a little bit because, As an investigator, we essentially did that, but we did them in notices to produce, where they were, people were required to give us documents. So it wasn't as big of a deal. The freedom of information request stuff, I started to do more in, I guess, 2021, 2020, 2020, 2021. Four or five years?

Yeah. That's fair? Yeah. More so in the past two years. Tim, you've been dealing with the other side of it, but how many years have you been dealing with? So including my health care experience and my post-health care career, I'm getting close to 20 years. Okay. Has it gotten easier from your eyes or harder to get information out?

I assume when you hit over the target, it's impossible. And you're going to have to go to the full reach. You're in court. You're talking to the commissioner or whatever their title is. but overall is it become easier or harder in your estimation? I'm going to give a two-pronged answer. One, it's easier to make the request now because you can email in requests. Not quite often you'll get records that way.

So there is a process now where it's easier. But when you find something juicy that the words got, out in Saskatchewan, there used to be a lot of respect for the commissioner's recommendations that if you were a government institution, you got investigated by the commissioner, he said, you should release those records. Those records were usually released. There was a lot of respect for what the commissioner investigated. That respect is sliding down the hill fast. The commissioner puts out an annual report. He documents the statistically how bad it's got. And now the word is out that if you work in the FOI business,

you really don't have to follow the commissioner's recommendations. And no one's really going to take that next step and go to court. I think we get to call our own shots here. Is the only way in Saskatchewan, I don't know if either of you can answer, I assume Tim can answer this, is the only way to change that is by a court? Or can the premier of Saskatchewan tomorrow say,

Listen, we're changing this rule so that you have to abide by his recommendation. Yes, that came out last year. In fact, multiple years, our privacy commissioners put in his annual report says, compliance with my recommendations is going down bad. I need order making power like most other privacy commissioners have in Canada. So Alberta has them. Most other provinces do. I need the same powers because now my recommendations are being ignored.

it. And the government responded, well, there's several places in Canada that don't have order-making power, like none of it. And we don't either, but we're doing a good job. That's what the government is Saskatchew. Yes. Yes. So, okay, this is going to bring me back because it was the layer beneath the leaders. And then I hear that and I go, so we can sit here and go, oh, the leaders are doing a great job. Everybody's doing a great job, rah, bra. And then I hear that. And I'm like, I'm going to crap on Scott Moe for a second. Because I'm like, wait a second. Is there any chance Scott Moe didn't know what that said and doesn't understand it or didn't have any oversight of that statement or anything? Like, is there any loophole where you're like, well, maybe Scott Moe's doing a pretty good job? Or are you like, no, like, there's no way you would possibly say such a thing as a leader of a province without knowing? The commissioner has been recommending order power be granted to their office for at least 10 years now. So the message has been out there loud,

but it's getting louder and louder now from the commissioner's office because the compliance keeps getting worse. It's not getting better. It's statistically getting much worse. I mean, if you don't have to buy it, you're just not going to buy by it. That's right.

So isn't that the leader? Like, I mean, I know when we talk about the bureaucracy, but like, isn't that the leader of a province? Scott Moe could walk in with his cabinet ministers tomorrow and say, it's time we update this legislation, We've got lots of models. We don't have to re- I hate to speculate on that, folks.

I'll let you do the speculating. Yeah, you know, there's pathways within the government to have changes to legislation, right? And these should be trigger points. You know, when a commissioner is coming forward and saying that they need additional powers to have compliance to the actual legislation, then your ministers, your MLAs, your premier

should all be turning around to say, okay, we need to review this piece of legislation and see. They just did this in Alberta, and I'm not sure if they'll be good updates or not yet, because I haven't worked within the new FOIP Freedom of Information legislation, but there was a revision because it was outdated for the technological advances that are, and technology that is being applied in workplaces and stuff like that. So they had to really do an adjustment to what that freedom of information was. Like I said, whether it's going to be good or allow them to withhold more, I guess we'll see as that goes. But you need a trigger point.

And if the commissioner's been requesting it over and over and over again, that he gets the ability to get an order. because in order, in order to decline that, now that entity or agency has to go before the courts in a judicial review of that order. And that's a step that, you know, goes into the courts after that for a proper review. That's what Saskatchewan needs is the ability to write that order so that things aren't going into the courts. I mean, our courts are already overwhelmed. Why should a privacy request have to reach a threshold where it goes into the court to get enforced?

That's just asinine, right? I mean, it's absolutely ridiculous to think that we have to go to that measure to get a public body to be transparent. Absolutely ridiculous. And I'm fortunate that I know enough of the legislation I can self-represent in court, but unless you've worked a long time in it, I wouldn't recommend anyone to, do that so they know that they're putting up a paywall in front of them ever getting sued. So SAS power can hire a law firm which they've done. They can throw all the money they want at it.

And the applicant normally would have to go hire a lawyer, spend thousands and thousands of dollars to get a record so small that it wouldn't even incur any fees. but we're not giving it to you. And so they're very comfortable in thinking the public can make access requests and we don't like it. They're going to have to pay thousands and thousands of dollars and we know they're not going to do it.

We'll call our own shots. Yeah. And this is part of that bureaucratic system that we're dealing with. Like there's blockades at all different levels and it doesn't, it sits that our public offices do not act as if they are in the interest of the public.

And I won't paint that as a broad brush around, but anywhere there are individuals in those that are unelected. They are public officials or public employees that have determined that they're entitled to not produce documentation. And that's not an entitlement that we have. You know, those documents, your job is in the public realm. and when you go into one of those positions, you go in with the knowledge that you are acting on behalf of the government in your position, no matter what your position is,

whether you're an administrator or all the way up through to a minister or a deputy minister or the premier. I mean, there needs to be transparency because that is part of this regaining the trust in the in the in the in the public. public, if they actually have an intention to do that and try to rebuild that relationship with the public, transparency is where they need to start because, you know, that leads to accountability, it leads to scrutiny. It actually leads to constructive conversations around topics that affect communities because you don't even know what's happening with this nuclear facility, how it's going to

affect people, the economic impact. Why can't we have a lot? It might be. It might be. a slam dunk. I mean, chances are that they're hiding things probably leads you to the other conclusion. But certainly, you know, that's what healthy public forum debate hearing both sides, then people can make informed decisions. Geez, it sounds like me from like August 2021 when I started down this rabbit hole of just trying to like open up discussion around it. And you find that, you know, certain censorship and certain key stakeholders, I guess, would prefer that. not to happen. You know, on your court case, Tim, when is your next, like, when's your date in court or do you know? March the 5th. Oh, so it's coming up right away. It is. And on March the fifth, forgive me, because I don't know the answer to the, well, I guess it's why I asked

a question, folks. Is it like one day and you get an answer? Is this like going to be like Tamara Leach style thing and Chris Barber where it's like four years later, we have a nuclear reactor and it's the longest trial in human Canadian history on how to get a cost of a project out. So it's going to be somewhere in between. I'm quite expecting there's going to be further court dates after the March 5th date. And here's part of it.

So I'm just going to call it 1,000 pages. It's slightly less than 1,000 pages. I got denied access to those originally. The commissioner's office reviewed them and said almost all. of those 1,000 pages I should get. The commissioner has staff. They know, this is all they do is freedom of information, privacy.

They know every exemption in their sleep. You could pull them out at 3 in the morning and they could do a report. They're very smart people there. Judges who hear freedom of information cases, as they have told me, this is the first time in their life they've had a freedom of information case. And now the judges. The judges. There's only been about a dozen in the history of Saskatchewan.

So that judge is now tasked because SAS powers refused to follow the commissioner's recommendations to go line by line on 1,000 pages to see if SAS powers exemptions apply. A judge could be doing something. else the commissioners already done this so I'm not sure how long it's going to take the judge to have enough time to one be familiar with this this law and two this is what the law requires you have to go line by line on those thousand pages to see if any of the exemptions applied I might get to see you again sometime with an update but it could go quicker than what I think we're about to find out I hate to even ask this question.

Do you know who the judge is? Not yet. Because I'm like, well, we've seen how this plays out in Canada, haven't we, folks? You know? Not to throw any judges under the bus, but certainly there's been, every once in a while we get a glimpse. We get like this glimmer of hope, like maybe things are going to start to turn the right way. And then usually intend to resign Justin Trudeau or not a real party Jagmeet Singh or, you know,

you catch the drift, grabs the wheel and yanks. us back over the guardrail one more time. Well, I can give some good news in mind. I have one other case I haven't talked about. It's much smaller. I didn't think I'd have to go to Coffres just for the construction of a power line and how much it costs.

I've had three different judges so far because there's been different court dates. They have treated me fairly. They have looked at the case. They've given their best effort. And I think they've done well to understand the line. the best they can for seeing something for the first time.

But they're not the privacy commissioner. This commissioner's done hundreds of these. And for a judge to have to substitute all the effort that the commissioner did and squeeze it into their time that they have to hear all these other cases on so many other things, it's not so easy for them. But I'm pleased with the judges who have. I've seen in the effort they've given. So I think provincially, on a freedom of information case, I'm having it a lot better

than Tamara Leach has. It's just, you know, it's almost funny, you know? It's just like, I can't believe I'm, you know, I'm sitting here and it's like, is there anything else before I let you two find folks out of this room that you want to make sure people know when it comes freedom of information, things you're working on, things that you think they should know about, things that have come across your desk in the last little bit, you know,

that is really important to make sure the public knows about. Well, I think the big takeaway for your audience needs to be that people do need to, you know, seek the transparency of the government by doing information requests on any topic that they might have a question about. Because, and they shouldn't look at it as a barrier. And be persistent. You know, don't worry about, you know, sending them an email and asking them for an update

and getting their help filing these or learning how to structure to ask the questions to get the, you know, the search words. And there's a lot that goes around putting that information in and getting it. But don't be afraid to do it. And I say that because we need to start. not being complacent with our governments because everybody looks to point a finger of accountability at everyone else but themselves and a big part of it is that every single one of us like I look and go wow there was lots of times where I wasn't asking questions I wasn't reading

documents oh it's too big I don't have time the kids have sports whatever it might be there's a million excuses I've heard from people as to why they can't read something but that is how we got to this point is that every single one of us, every single person in our country has failed to put a lens on something and ask questions. And we need to start practicing that again. We need to teach our kids to do it, that it's okay to ask questions and to have healthy conversation around topics. And you might find you support something once you get transparency or ask questions around it. And you might find that, hey, that's not for me, but I see how it can be right for other people. And it helps us build understanding, too, with the other people in our communities.

And, you know, we're all guilty of saying we don't have the time to read something. I don't have the time to fill in that document and email it to government and try to get transparency. Or they get it and they go, it's 2,000 pages. I don't want to read it. Well, have a few. people over and get them to help you and drink have some wine while you do it you know have get together in groups but we every single person has to start taking responsibility for how we got to where we're at today with our government overrunning us and we and feel making us feel like we are not able to have any transparency for them that's because we've allowed them to do that and i think that's really important for people to go stop trying to point

fingers at everybody else that's doing a job in our province, whether it's private or not. You have to look inside and say, okay, how can I seek some answers here and how did I contribute to where we're at now where now we're playing catch up? And I think every single person needs to do that. And one thing I'll add, for anyone who's gotten curious about this, if you get in touch with Sean, he can put you in contact with me. I help people get started. Are you guys either of you for hire? You mentioned at the start that you've been hired before.

Are either of you, because once again, people can go in the show notes to text me, and I can gradually pass along emails to you too, I think would probably be the easiest I'm going to assume. But if people were like, I have something. We have somebody who's got, let's just say, money in the background that wants to get you involved in something is that's something you both are available to do or that's not something you do? Yeah, that's something that I do. It is something that I do.

And when I get started with someone, I do live up to my reputation. I see if we can get for free first. And it is surprising. We've talked about some complicated cases today, but I have thousands and thousands of pages of records that I got very easily. There still is a compliance out there. it's not as good as it should be, but there are a lot of things you can get,

you can get them quick, and I can help you do that. I appreciate you both coming to, well, the studio in doing this. I find what you two do. You know, I had a guy on, Larry Hancock. It was very interesting. He was a self-proclaimed, what do you call himself?

Document geek? Document nerd. And when you said you should get a bottle of wine, I'm like, oh, yeah, and have a nerd out party and read government documents. But his were about JFK. the assassination and every time they do releases him and others go sifting through it right because somebody needs to do it and certainly with uh what you're talking about is i'm like i i respect what you both do because i've i implore people to go read the latest covid 19 Alberta response plan

whatever it was i can't remember the title it's got some goofy government name doesn't matter and just, you know, what's the best way to eat an elephant one piece at a time? What's the best way to slowly get through a government dot? Just a couple pages of time. Just wake up every morning in a month's time. You'll have it done. And you can at least go, well, I read it. I don't agree with it.

I'd agree with it. But at least you know more. And if more of us started doing that with some of the document dumps or some of the information that's coming out, we'd probably be way better informed and have a better grasp on how we're being. manipulated or things twisted and everything else. But either way, appreciate both of you coming and doing this because you have a skill and the skill is needed and we need more others to pick up that,

I don't know, just to learn and run with it because the more information that comes out, the more transparency that's granted on, I think, you know, we always look at the province or even the federal government, but like you're talking about the Ammonton Police Service, right? you're talking about nuclear energy, I just think of how many different communities are being affected

where they want to expose a couple things and give it some sunlight to help people understand what's going on and that's what you're doing is a great service. So if people wanted to hire you, I'm glad that they can. Even if you find them a freeway, Tim, I think it's important that people are listening. Oh, man, that we try and find ways for you guys to make some money doing it and get on the case for whatever people are trying to figure out.

Yeah, and just to that point, you're not always looking for the bad things. You know, you might actually find that your officials are doing something really well and they're hitting blockades, other spaces, you know, whether it's federally, provincially. Correct. So you're not always looking for, you know, people always think you're looking for the faults, but actually you can look at them too and really see where. things are being done well. So it's not just always this, people always put a negative lens on

everything because that's where the frustration pops up. But there's a lot of good that you see in our government agencies or organizations where they are trying to battle through this and ask questions and they're hitting blockades. And that's actually really important for people to see too because then they can put pressure on that blockade versus their localized official that Versus me crapping on Daniel Smith from time to time. Well, you know, a lot of people do that where you might be focusing that on the wrong person, whereas they're actually fighting the battle as well and maybe their teams are and just generalizing, but they might be hitting a blockade.

So really, you're trying to find just transparency altogether is good. And people are always scared of that and I don't think they should be. Yeah. Yeah. I actually really agree. I appreciate both of you coming in and doing this. Best of luck with your court case, Tim. I think I'll be, what date was that again?

March? March the 5th. March the 5th. So a little over a month away. I think there will be some eyes, hopefully a few more eyes on it. Because I'd be very curious to see what happens there and see if it can take six years or, you know, I don't know, a shorter time frame.

Either way, thanks folks for hopping in here. Yeah, thank you very much.