In August, Mayor Simon Yu moved to amend Public Notice Bylaw No. 9329, and return to publishing public notices in the local newspaper. That was supported by Coun. Trudy Klassen and Coun. Brian Skakun. The other councillors defeated that motion.
According to BC Municipal Affairs, BC Community Charter, Chapter 26, Part 4, was changed to allow communities that no longer have access to local public news outlets or lack access to public online news to use other information platforms. Just over a dozen of BC’s 167 municipalities have no local news source. None of that criterion fits Prince George.
Today, citizens can receive information by either signing up to receive city e-mails or follow the city’s Facebook account. For the city’s online sign-up, a) the information is kept online for a short period of time, b) the city chooses what to tell citizens and, c) information is hard to find. Sure, you can simply read Facebook’s social media, but you cannot verify it, reply, or question it.
Egregiously, when city council defeated the attempt to reinstate use of local media outlets for citizen information, city council knew then that Facebook’s immediate intent was to remove Canadian news from its own platform.
Easy sign-up for Facebook accounts is false. Check Facebook Help Centre to verify:
If you want a Facebook account, you must provide government issued ID, or non-government ID containing “Official certificates or licences that include your name or other physical items like a magazine prescription or piece of mail” … “in some cases there may be special ID requirements”.
Government issued ID must confirm your name and date of birth, or name and photo, “Drivers Licence, National Identity Card, Passport, Birth Certificate”. Non-government ID is “Student Card, Library card, Refugee Card, Employment verification, Diploma or Loyalty Card”.
Facebook can accept or reject any ID sent, and ask for more, like government ID.
Facebook/Meta is gathering massive amounts of private (and government) data. That raises massive red flags.
So, either way, the City of Prince George decides what we will and will not know, and how we get that.
Meanwhile, in June, the Canadian Association of Journalists (CAJ) selected the City of Prince George as the municipal winner of the 2022 Code of Silence Award for Outstanding Achievement in Government Secrecy.
Nothing could be less democratic than how city and city council provide engagement and vital two-way communication.
Jan Manning
Prince George
