Petition on Nova Scotia FOIPOP Act Fees
- Right to Know Coalition of Nova Scotia
- Closed on
- Target:
- Nova Scotia Citizens
- Region:
- Canada
- Website:
- nsrighttoknow.ca
Hello,
We have crossed the 100 signature mark and closed the petition. More signatures on paper are on their way to Darce as well. We at the Coalition thank you for taking the time to sign.
You may have noticed a post in our news blog from yesterday that reports a 42% reduction in FOI requests in Ireland since they raised their fees. This supports the idea that the cost of a request ultimately affects the transparency and accountability of our government. It impacts you.
We do consider our first experiment with an online petition a success and we will likely use this method for issues in the future. Stay tuned and thanks once again for your participation.
Greg Pemberton
Web Admin RTKNS
The Right to Know Coalition of Nova Scotia
Advocating, Educating, and Mobilizing the Citizens of Nova Scotia to Exercise Their Rights to Information.
The Right to Know Coalition of Nova Scotia (RTKNS) is a non-profit organization. Through advocacy and education, RTKNS encourages the use and development of freedom-of-information legislation to foster a better informed and more politically active electorate in Nova Scotia and to improve the quality of public and private decision making in the province.
Reduction or elimination of the fees associated with accessing government held, public information is one of the foremost goals of the Right to Know Coalition of Nova Scotia.
**** Please note that those signatures labelled 'Anonymous' on the petition are by people who have chosen to not display their names on the web. Their names are available for the printed petition. ****
Petition on Nova Scotia FOIPOP Act Fees
Whereas the $25.00 fee and related costs have been shown to be burdensome for many citizens looking for information from government and other public bodies and,
Whereas we feel that these costs are not consistent with the purpose of the Act that requires Government and other public bodies to be "fully accountable" to the public and,
Whereas the total costs for processing an application has at times passed $1000.00 and there is no assurance that applicants are not paying for poor record keeping and,
Whereas the Government has already recognized that the fees create problems for applicants when it dropped the fee for an appeal to the Review Office;
Therefore be it resolved that we, the undersigned, call on the MacDonald Government to return the cost of a Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy application to $5.00, where it stood when the Act was passed by the legislature in 1993 and,
Be it further resolved that the two free hours for processing be restored and that related charges be reduced to $5.00 per hour.
The Petition on Nova Scotia FOIPOP Act Fees petition to Nova Scotia Citizens was written by Right to Know Coalition of Nova Scotia and is in the category Human Rights at GoPetition.