The office of former premier Alison Redford contravened privacy laws by using and disclosing personal information about former deputy premier Thomas Lukaszuk’s high cellphone charges, an investigation has found.
The investigation was launched after a controversial $20,000 cellphone bill was leaked to the Edmonton Sun during the Progressive Conservative leadership campaign in August 2014. Lukaszuk, who finished third in the campaign, said at the time he believed the cellphone bill was leaked strategically to damage his campaign.
The billing information was circulated in 2012 and 2013 within Redford’s executive council as officials tried to reduce the cellphone charges. Investigator Brian Hamilton, from the office of Alberta’s privacy commissioner, found that was an understandable business purpose.
But paper copies of the same information were circulated again in March 2014, two years after the charges had been incurred. The cellphone bills were retrieved from secure storage at the request of the executive assistant to Farouk Adatia, Redford’s chief of staff.
“I found there was no evidence that the disclosure of the personal information at issue was done in a controlled manner with due consideration of all relevant circumstances,” Hamilton, director of compliance and special investigations with the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner, said in a report released Wednesday.
“I therefore concluded the personal information was disclosed in contravention of Part 2 of the FOIP Act.”
The investigator also found the use of personal information in 2014 to be in contravention of section 39 of the Freedom of Information and Privacy Act.
“No explanation was provided as to why the records were retrieved from storage at this time, and there is no documentary evidence to support an authorized business purpose.”