The Official Opposition has have received a $107,280 for one Freedom of Information request. Ethics and Democracy Critic Meara Conway says on November 1st, they requested the government provide details about its provincial drainage policy and the effectiveness of the government’s flood risk assessment efforts. In response, the NDP were asked to to pay half the over $107,000 in advance.

The reasoning is that it is 100,000 pages long and the time needed to search and retrieve paper versus electronic documents would take about the same amount of time for each – 539 hours. In total, to fulfill the request, according to the NDP, the government said it needed 3,606 hours and offered two hours, valued at $60, free of charge.

A news release from the NDP says according to the independent information and Privacy Commissioner, estimated FOI fees have skyrocketed since the Premier took office. Total estimated fees in 2018-19 were $130,200 and last year they were over $2.3 million with over 200 fewer applications received last year compared to 2018-19.