By Jorge Barrera
APTN National News
The federal privacy watchdog is disputing Aboriginal Affairs’ version of events around an internal investigation into allegations the federal department’s officials spied on a First Nations children’s advocate.
The Privacy Commissioner’s office, however, says that’s not true. A spokesperson for the Privacy Commissioner said Friday that the agency actually informed Aboriginal Affair’s deputy minister Michael Wernick that it was in the process of launching its own investigation.
“We would like to take the opportunity to supplement or correct information which you may have been provided by Aboriginal Affairs,” said spokesperson Scott Hutchinson, in an email to APTN National News.
Blackstock, the executive director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society, alleged that Aboriginal Affairs officials spied on her by monitoring her speaking events and social media presence along with perusing her Indian status file held by the department.
In response to the allegations, former Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Duncan told the House of Commons in November 2011 that he had tasked Wernick with launching an internal probe into Blackstock’s allegation.
Aboriginal Affairs said in a statement that the department’s Access to Information and Privacy Directorate “conducted an internal investigation and determined that no privacy breach had occurred.”
The statement said that former minister Duncan then wrote the Privacy Commissioner saying that the investigation had come up empty and opened the door for the independent body to conduct its own probe.
Here is where the stories diverge.
According to Aboriginal Affairs, “on December 5, 2011, the Assistant Privacy Commissioner wrote back to the deputy minister indicating that she would not be conducting an investigation.”
Hutchinson said Wernick never received such a statement because the privacy watchdog was “very concerned about the issues” that surfaced in media reports about Blackstock’s allegations and had begun to look into the matter.
“In our response letter sent to deputy minister Michael Wernick on Dec. 5, 2011, Assistant Privacy Commissioner Chantal Bernier confirmed that we were in ‘the process of examining the possibility of initiating an investigation on the basis of publicly available information,'” said Hutchinson.
Neither Valcourt’s office nor the department could be immediately reached for comment.
Blackstock’s organization, along with the Assembly of First Nations, launched a human rights complaint in 2007 against Ottawa alleging the federal government underfunded of child and family services on First Nations reserves.
The complaint was successfully amended to include allegations of “retaliation” by the department against Blackstock over her human rights complaint.
The issue around the spying allegations surfaced this week during ongoing hearings before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. Blackstock’s lawyer Paul Champ said the department had failed to provide any files related to its investigation into the spying allegations through the disclosure process.
Blackstock filed her own complaint with the Privacy Commissioner last March and a report is expected soon.
[email protected]
@JorgeBarrera
