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September
2003
Newsletter
City
Forced to End Secrecy
In
June, the City lost a long battle to prevent release of
studies related to the proposed Red Hill Creek Expressway.
A decision of the provincial Information and Privacy Commissioner
ruled that the City cannot use "client-solicitor privilege"
to prevent the release of such documents.
Freedom
of information requests were filed by several parties in
an attempt to obtain some 76 documents related to the squirrel
studies which the City refused to release. The City's refusal
was appealed to the Office of the Information and Privacy
Commissioner. In his decision, senior adjudicator David
Goodis rejected extensive legal arguments by City lawyers
and ruled that client-solicitor privilege "does not
apply to any of the records at issue". He ordered them
all released.
He
based his decision largely on the fact that the studies
were required under a 1997 cabinet order that included an
expectation that "the progress and results of the study
would be available to the public".
However,
the ruling came months after the last opportunity for public
comment on expressway studies, so the goal of the City to
keep the reports secret until they were no longer useful
may have been achieved.
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