VICTORIA, BC | Both the City of Victoria and the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner have responded to a petition for judicial review of a decision to deny the release of internal investigation reports into allegations of rampant misconduct among bylaw officers.
The existence of the reports in question has been revealed on October 30 2025 by CTV News, which published an article titled “Victoria bylaw department marred by bullying, discrimination investigations” in which two former City of Victoria Community Safety and Bylaw Services employees went public with allegations of widespread misconduct within the department. The reporting is accompanied by a brief summary obtained from the City of Victoria via a Freedom of Information (FOI) request, in the form of a table showing that several complaints of discrimination and harassment in the past few years have been found by internal investigations to be either founded or partially founded.
The next day, CTV News published a follow-up article featuring the municipality’s official response, including an interview of the Mayor in which she expressed disappointment but denies the municipal council can do much to intervene; “In general, it would be unusual for a governance board to interfere in personnel (matters),” she said.
On November 19 2025, the complainant filed a Freedom of Information (FOI) request with the City of Victoria for the investigation reports. The request was ultimately denied under s. 22(1) of the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA), on the grounds that these were employment records. The municipality held its ground without explanation even when the complainant countered with s. 25(1)(b) of FIPPA, which states disclosure must nevertheless be made if clearly in the public interest, and explicitly prevails over the remainder of FIPPA.
Therefore the complainant requested a review of the decision by the OIPC, expressing concern that lack of disclosure undermined public confidence in the department’s capacity to carry out its duties to the public in accordance with human rights law. In contrast, the municipality hasn’t put forward a single argument against the invocation of the public interest disclosure clause of FIPPA.
Yet in his decision, issued on May 20 2026, OIPC Investigations Director Nathan Elliot either weighed against or ignored every argument put forward by the complainant, in favour of the duty to protect personal information from harmful disclosure, without providing any meaningful analysis in support of this stance.
On June 24, the complainant filed a petition for judicial review at the BC Supreme Court, Victoria Registry, as File No. 2615294: Martin Girard v The Corporation of the City of Victoria and the Information and Privacy Commissioner of British Columbia. In the petition, Girard argues that the decision makes unreasonable findings of fact, ignores crucial evidence, gives overwhelming weight to irrelevant factors, invokes arbitrary criteria, and runs counter to recent jurisprudence.
On August 7, both respondents belatedly served their respective responses.
The municipality’s response is terse: it posits, without elaborating, that the complainant has not met the extraordinary burden of proof required to engage the clear public interest clause of FIPPA. Ironically, it turns out that Legal Services weren’t involved in the OIPC review process, against the complainant’s advice; since the municipality’s FOI department made no arguments in the first instance, and in principle a party to a judicial review isn’t allowed to present arguments that could have been made in the first instance, this outcome was predictable.
The OIPC takes no position on the order sought by the petitioner, and shall only provide guidance to the court as befits an administrative tribunal. This policy is common, as in rare instances costs have been awarded against tribunals that defended patently unreasonable decisions in court (see for example Bagri v. Workers’ Compensation Appeal Tribunal, 2009 BCSC 300).
The only notable objections the OIPC has made pertain to arguments the petitioner introduced following Workers’ Compensation Board (Re), 2026 BCIPC 40, an OIPC decision which was released just as the submission process concluded, unbeknownst to the parties to the investigation. The OIPC submits that the arguments should be excluded because they attempt to reargue a position which the petitioner has already conceded, and also because they could have been made in the first instance; the petitioner shall argue otherwise on both counts.
The Office of the Deputy Attorney General declined to intervene in the case. No date has been set for the hearing, which both respondents estimate will take 1 ½ days.
More information about the petition is available at ADVISORY: Press conference to announce lawsuit against the City of Victoria and the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner.
ABOUT THE PETITIONER:
Martin Girard is a community advocate running as a candidate for Victoria’s council in the upcoming municipal elections in October 2026, on a platform of transparency and accountability for public officials. More at martingirardforvictoriacouncil.ca.
CONTACT: Martin Girard
EMAIL: martin.girard@martingirardforvictoriacouncil.ca
PHONE: 7787005647
REFERENCES:
- CTV News: Victoria bylaw department marred by bullying, discrimination investigations
- CTV News: Victoria mayor calls bullying investigations in bylaw department ‘disappointing’
- Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act
- Bagri v. Workers’ Compensation Appeal Tribunal, 2009 BCSC 300
- Workers’ Compensation Board (Re), 2026 BCIPC 40