Gathering Information for Advocacy

A Watershed Advocate’s credibility can be destroyed or saved by the quality of his or her information.  Understanding what steps have been taken, by whom, and why, is essential for an effective campaign.

When beginning a campaign you’ll want to do some digging to get an idea of who the players are and what they think about your issue.  As the campaign goes on, you’ll have more questions about the issues and about what solutions will work.  Some important sources of information are:

·          Allies – If others have been working on, or monitoring, the issue longer than you have they should be able to give you some pointers.  Other watershed protection advocates, environmental activists, friendly media contacts or others who are plugged into the political landscape may be able to help.

·          Experts – Being able to show that your information comes from experts with lots of fancy letters after their names can help give credibility to your group.  However, be careful not to over-use experts.  If they are charging you they are expensive.  If they are volunteering their time, you do not want to burn them out or to distract them with questions that can be easily answered by anyone familiar with the issues.  Also, get the right expert for the right job – a forester may be able to tell you little about the impact of a particular pesticide on a newt population, but more about what is a sustainable level of logging.  Looking at an expert’s past work may help tell you whether his or her expertise will be useful to your issue.  Be aware – experts do disagree.  Do not assume that an expert is automatically correct.  Need to find an expert?  Universities are a good place to look.  Sometimes a student will be willing to answer basic questions and point you in the right direction towards a more qualified expert.

·          Government – Government is such an important source of information that it gets its own section.  See below.

·          Internet – The electronic world is increasingly valuable for checking up on government and on other people of influence.  Check out websites of governments, allies, opponents – anyone who might know something about your issue or related issues.  Do searches and see what you can dig up.

·          Opponents – There is nothing stopping you from talking to groups or individual that you expect to be opponents to find out what they think about their issue and what position they will be taking.  Who knows – you may find you have more in common than you think.  However, be careful not to get into an argument and to keep your conversation professional and civil.  Try to view conversations as opportunity to exchange information and not an attempt to change anyone’s mind or to tell the opponent what a jerk he or she is.  If you can’t trust yourself to remain polite and civil, you’re probably better off not calling. 

Getting information from government

The government is supposed to be the servant of the people, and open and accountable, so feel free to look up the main office of a government ministry or department and give them a call.  Describe your problem and ask who you should be speaking to.  Try to pick a ministry or department that is fairly directly related to your problem, but if you’re not sure, ask them who else you should be speaking to.  For a local government, the planning department may be a good bet if you don’t know specifically who to speak to.

Also, government employees can be a good source of free expert advice.  Many government employees are very knowledgeable and can answer all kinds of questions both about the issues and about how government is supposed to work.  There are different skills and different opinions within government, and as time goes on you may develop a relationship with certain employees whose judgment you trust.  Obviously, however, your reliance on government information will be difficult if your work is at odds with decisions that the ministry or department has made or with a government agenda. 

Finally, if government will not voluntarily provide you with information, you can make a formal request for information under the Access to Information Act (for the federal government) or the Freedom of Information and Privacy Act (for provincial and local governments):

·          A formal information request should be in writing and should state clearly what information you are requesting. 

·          You can request that that you be allowed to review documents at a government office or that copies be provided for you.  The former is sometimes cheaper.  You can also request that the government assemble information from its databases for you.

·          The Government may try to charge you for these services, but you can ask for a waiver of any fees on the grounds that you are looking for information in the public interest.  Give details about why the information you are looking for is in the public interest and, if you cannot afford a fee say so.  

·          The government will prepare an estimate of what, if any, fees they will be charging before they start preparing the requested information. 

Try to get information you want from government by persuasion before you file an aggressive information request.  Once into the formal procedure the government is required to follow a time-line but it can give itself extensions and otherwise take a long time to get around to answering you.  Also, there are certain types of document the government does not need to release to you, but which might be released if you ask nicely first.  But in the end, if government does not want to give you the documents you want, follow up with a formal request. 

For more information on environmental problems in B.C.:

·          The B.C. Government’s State of the Environment Reporting

·          The Green Lane – an environmental information website maintained by the federal government. 

·          The Environmental Links Page of West Coast Environmental Law can take you to the web pages of a wide range of federal and provincial environmental organizations.

For more information on accessing government information:

·          The B.C. Government Directory

·          The Resources for Citizens page of the B.C. Freedom of Information and Privacy Commissioner website. 

·          The federal government’s Access to Information and Privacy web page. 

·          The National Access to Information FAQs page.

·          The B.C. Freedom of Information and Privacy Association exists to help members of the public figure out how to access information from government.