(ADAM PROSKIW / iNFOnews.ca)

OPINION

This week we told you about Rick Halisheff, a musician in Kelowna who is likely being forced to leave. His landlord for the last eight years is selling his house because of course she is, and he can’t find anything in the over-heated real estate market and even less that he can afford.

To be honest, I expected a little more compassion and a lot more outrage.

The story wasn’t even really about Halisheff. It’s mostly about the people who helped build this city who can no longer afford to live here. Thousands of them being forced out. Halisheff, also known as Poppa Dawg, is just the most public face on the housing crisis so far.

But it’s also precisely about Halisheff. Poppa Dawg is and has been a part of the city’s culture for 25 years, playing at venues throughout the city, solo and in bands. It means something that he’s getting pushed out.

Most of this city didn’t even exist 50 years ago and it’s already being gentrified into a hipster paradise. The downtown is becoming unrecognizable as Doc Willoughby’s, Sturgeon Hall and Fernando’s are glammed up for over-priced beer and cocktails. This city is changing, its old fixtures being discarded, bars and people among them.

Is this the kind of soulless city we want?

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Everyone is full of nothing but praise for Kamloops This Week and Jessica Wallace's investigation into the spending scandal at the Thompson-Nicola Regional District — and for good reason.

One part of that investigation that is severely over-looked was the difficulties they had trying to pry the information from the bureaucracy that tried to withhold it. We live under a tyranny of privacy legislation in this province and this country and at some point the pendulum must stop.

Cops are slaves to the Federal Privacy Act and won’t identify murder victims, often won’t even inform the community when one of them is suddenly removed.

The B.C. Coroner’s Service — which exists for the sole purpose of investigating public deaths to ensure “no death is overlooked, concealed or ignored” — in fact now conceals just about every death and investigation it possibly can.

This week, we tried to find basic information from B.C. Corrections about when a prisoner was released. Sorry, privacy.

We also tried to get answers from social service agencies in Kamloops and the province whose complete lack of oversight nearly killed a disabled Kamloops senior. They won’t answer any questions. Sorry, privacy reasons.

There's not a shred of public information in the child protection system either. Tell me that didn't create cover for Robert Riley Saunders to run rampant through the system for years undetected while he robbed the poor kids he was supposed to be helping.

Local governments are hooked on the privacy stuff as well. The City of Kelowna once sent me a $14,000 fee estimate because I asked to see all memos passed to Mayor and Council from staff.

Then a month ago, we sent a freedom of information request to the City of West Kelowna to see if we could find out why it went completely silent about Iron Energy gym. The city once denied the gym a business licence while the gym was defying public health orders, but declined to take the same action when it happened again a short time later. We tried asking councillors why the change and they sent us to the CAO Paul Gipps who is apparently immune from public questions and concerns.

So we sent a formal FOI asking for correspondence between Gipps and Mayor and Councillors on the subject. Here’s all the ways bureaucrats found to completely deny a simple request.

• Section 14: The head of a public body may refuse to disclose information subject to solicitor-client privilege
• Section 15: The head of a public body may refuse to disclose information if it could harm a law enforcement matter or reveal the identity of a public informant
• Section 22 (1): The head of a public body my refuse to disclose if it would be an unreasonable invasion of a third party’s privacy
• Section 22 (2): The information from the third party was supplied in confidence
• Section 22 (3): The personal information is part of an investigation into a possible violation of law

— Marshall Jones is the Managing Editor of iNFOnews.ca

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