Ontario's Greenbelt email-gate scandal nabs national lack of transparency award
In Nov. 2024, the Toronto Star reported that a senior Ford government staffer implicated in Ontario's Greenbelt scandal refused to hand over emails that may have been sent from a personal email account to other government staffers and lobbyists interested in developing the protected land.
This year's Code of Silence jury found this violation of Ontario's Freedom of Information laws was particularly egregious in light of the fact that Bonnie Lysyk, Ontario's Auditor General, stipulated in an August 2023 report that using non-governmental resources to conduct official government business was unacceptable.
The staffer at the centre of the controversy resigned from his position after the Auditor General's report found he did not abide by the best practices provided to bureaucrats.
"Communication between lobbyists and political staff using their personal email accounts also creates the perception of preferential access and treatment, and thereby an unfair advantage to those receiving unauthorized confidential information from political staff," Lysyk wrote in her report.
James L. Turk, director of the Centre for Free Expression at Toronto Metropolitan University said having the Premier of Ontario and his staff conduct public business from personal devices and accounts flies in the face of current FOI laws.
"This all undermines public rights to information under Ontario freedom of information legislation," said Turk. "Emails by one Ford government executive on his personal account may hold some answers to the Greenbelt controversies, but the government has claimed they have no 'legal mechanism' to compel return of the messages when the practice was exposed – conveniently keeping the emails hidden from public scrutiny."
This year's Code of Silence jury also agreed to bestow a dishonourable mention on thirteen Saskatchewan ministries who disregarded a decision by the province's Information Commissioner to have records released in a machine-readable format to The Globe and Mail as part of its Secret Canada project.
The Saskatchewan government has said it provided all the records requested, subject to exemptions and was "not considering changes to the province's access to information legislation."
The Code of Silence Awards are presented annually by the CAJ, the Centre for Free Expression at Toronto Metropolitan University (CFE), and the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE). The awards call public attention to government or publicly-funded agencies that work hard to hide information to which the public has a right to under access to information legislation.
Last year, Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston was recognized as the provincial Code of Silence winner for his office's punting of promises to empower the province's information and privacy commissioner.
The remaining 2024 Code of Silence Awards will be handed out bi-weekly. This year's winner in the municipal category will be announced on May 14.
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