Frank Work is being accused of conducting a biased investigation after publicly announcing a former minister of Sustainable Resource Development did not violate FOIP regulations by holding a second email account. The criticism stems from the decision not to interview Ted Morton directly.
The privacy commissioner's findings come after allegations surfaced during the leadership campaign, accusing the candidate of attempting to evade public scrutiny by sending controversial correspondence through a covert account that used his middle names Frederick Lee.
Morton admitted he kept a second account, but said the reason was administrative efficiency – it let him use one account for internal correspondence and one account for communicating with a high volume of queries from the public.
"The investigation found no evidence that the email address was used by Mr. Morton to circumvent the FOIP Act," Work said in a press release. "It appears the Frederick Lee email address was used to manage emails, given the volume of emails sent to Mr. Morton's public ministerial email address."
Work also found there was no merit to a claim made by a former staff member that Morton and his team destroyed emails or other records during a cabinet shuffle in an effort to quash future requests for access to those records.
While the investigator hired to look into this case, Don Christal of Christal Consulting Inc, conducted interviews with 16 people, including the FOIP coordinator for Sustainable Resource Development, Morton's former executive assistant and SRD's former communications director, the politician at the centre of the controversy was not questioned.
This admission put opposition MLAs on the attack Tuesday morning.
"I think what we're seeing here is the freedom of information and protection of privacy information legislation in Alberta is, there's no question, slanted toward the government being able to hang onto information," said Laurie Blakeman.
Work admitted he made a mistake, but said it was an honest one.
"It was an oversight," he told media. "I had a good investigator, we had good parameters for it, so I did turn my mind to where or not to interview Mr. Morton. I didn't think it was necessary."
With Files from Serena Mah
