Yukon union alleges documents shredded in response to ATIPP, gov't denies wrongdoing

The Yukon Employees' Union (YEU) is accusing the territorial government's Public Service Commission of shredding documents in response to an access-to-information request.

The government, however, says that's not true and the documents in question couldn't have been legally shared.

The accusation stems from records recently obtained by YEU vice-president Justin Lemphers, who filed a request for internal conversations at the Public Service Commission about access-to-information requests,commonly referred to as ATIPPs.

Included in the records, which Lemphers shared with CBC News and which the union has posted in part on its website, is a February 2023 email chain where department employees are discussing an ATIPP request.

The scope of that request appears to include an investigation by the department's respectful workplace office. In the exchange, the office director indicates that the investigation would be considered a "personnel assessment" under ATIPP legislation and shouldn't be provided to the government's ATIPP office. She also proposes, among other things, that the assessment or records related to the assessment be "shredded/removed."

Lemphers said he was "shocked" to see that.

"The access to information legislation is clear that there needs to be transparency and adherence to the process So when we're seeing indications where there's been instruction delivered to staff to redact or shred documents, that raises all kinds of transparency issues, integrity issues," Lemphers said.

"It really puts us in a position of mistrust, of losing faith in what the government's representing whenever they're answering us on any particular question."

In a column in the YEU's Septmeber newsletter, Lemphers also alleged the instructions to shred the records were in "direct conflict with the Yukon ATIPP Act and is in violation of the newly ratified YEU/YG Collective Agreement."

YEU sharing 'inaccurate information,' government says

The Public Service Commission did not make anyone available for an interview. In a written statement, department spokesperson Ashley Kayseas said the YEU's newsletter "unfortunately contains some inaccurate information," but that "it would be a violation of ATIPP legislation to get into the specifics of the requests" .

The record at the centre of the shredding proposal was "a personnel assessment pertaining to a different ATIPP request that should not have legally been released by the Yukon government under the ATIPP Act," Kayseas said.

The Yukon's ATIPP legislation states that public bodies largely cannot grant access to personnel assessments.

"While we can't comment specifically on ATIPP requests, we can say that all records, including personnel assessments, are retained, and disposed of in accordance with the Public Service Commission's records and retention and disposition schedule that is governed by the Yukon Archives Act," Kayseas wrote.

"The Public Service Commission is fully committed to complying with all laws and regulations regarding Access to Information and Protection of Privacy requests."

Lemphers, in a statement posted to the YEU's website, asked the Public Service Commission to clarify the "inaccuracies" it saw in the union's newsletter. He also argued that all records relevant to an access request even ones that can't be legally shared are supposed to be provided to a designated access officer who can then advise the head of the public body to exclude them from the final records package.

"A public body should not remove, delete, or request records to be shredded unless they are out of scope," he wrote.

The Yukon Information and Privacy Commissioner Jason Pedlar was not available for an interview on the situation.

Communications manager Elaine Schiman, however, confirmed in an email that the office is not currently investigating any complaints about the "unauthorized shredding or otherwise disposing of information or records in response to an access request" under the ATIPP Act.

"Allegations of this kind are taken seriously by our office," she wrote, adding that, if concerns about the improper destruction of records arose, the information and privacy commissioner could choose to launch an investigation.

She said that the office has not investigated complaints of that kind before.