Privacy Commissioner Reports Mass Emails ‘Purging’ at Premier’s Office

This article was last updated on April 16, 2022

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A special report issued by B.C.’s information and privacy commissioner, Elizabeth Denham, revealed on Tuesday that it has discovered that several senior officials in the B.C. Premier’s Office have developed a habit of routinely wiping their entire email accounts clean of any information “on a regular basis.” Denham confirmed that she doesn’t have any evidence to prove that the regular email purges were done at the direction of the premier or senior staff, but she is sure that the emails are being deleted.

In her remarks, Commissioner Denham stated that “we have seen cases where some senior staff, when they’re asked for records, just have no email records — purged the account, or purged it on a regular basis,” adding that “I’m suggesting that the government look at establishing a policy whereby certain senior officials’ email baskets, their email accounts, are preserved across the board.” She said that the government is allowed to delete some “transitory” emails such as meeting notices or the like, but what is happening instead is a “liberal deletion of records.”

In response to the report, the Ministry of Technology has issued a statement to tell that it is reviewing the report and no decision has been made on an email management system. Additionally, the statement adds that the government is dealing with the most requests it’s ever seen and some “no responsive records” requests were made by the Premier’s Office because another ministry had the information. Denham’s criticism came as she released her report on government’s access to information responses titled “A Step Backwards.”