Public should see government credit card bills: privacy commissioner
Last Updated: Wednesday, July 2, 2008 | 7:40 PM ET
CBC News
Alberta's privacy commissioner has ordered the release of details of how a former provincial employee used his government credit card.
Frank Work issued the order Wednesday after the Alberta government repeatedly denied requests by the CBC for access to the credit card bills of former government employee Sasha Angus.
Angus, who was the executive assistant to Mark Norris, the former minister of economic development, racked up $29,000 on his government credit card, including for expenses related to a trip to Las Vegas, according to a 2004 memo leaked to CBC News.
In January 2007, Alberta Finance confirmed Angus, who left the Alberta legislature four years ago, paid the entire amount back to the government.
The privacy commissioner says Angus's bills should have been made public.
"The commissioner, in reading the reasons that the public bodies had put forward and applying those reasons to the [privacy] act, felt that public scrutiny was, indeed, an overriding issue in this particular matter, because these were personal expenses that had been charged to a government credit card," said Wayne Wood, a spokesman for the commissioner's office.
"He indicated that that's a fair part of public scrutiny because the public should be allowed to see that kind of thing."
The decision sets a significant precedent, Wood said, because the privacy commissioner has never ruled on the issue of access to records of government credit card spending.
