The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that the Ontario government does not have to disclose Premier Doug Ford’s mandate letters in a unanimous decision issued Friday.
Mandate letters traditionally lay out the marching orders a premier has for each of their ministers after taking office — and have been routinely released by governments across the country.
“FIPPA’s Cabinet records exemption was a critical part of the balance the legislature struck between public access to information and necessary spheres of government confidentiality,” she wrote.
Justice Suzanne Côté wrote a concurrent decision for the case, which agreed that the mandate letters are exempt from disclosure but disagreed about the standard of review.
The Ontario government’s submissions in the case had argued the information and privacy commissioner took a “narrow and restrictive approach” interpreting “substance of deliberations,” which amounts to “an unwarranted incursion into the functioning of cabinet.”
They argued against the government’s interpretation of the legislation, saying it would lead to “absurd results” including keeping secret “any record that revealed that a particular topic had been identified by the premier as a policy priority.”
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The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that the Ontario government does not have to disclose Premier Doug Ford’s mandate letters in a unanimous decision issued Friday.
Mandate letters traditionally lay out the marching orders a premier has for each of their ministers after taking office — and have been routinely released by governments across the country.
“FIPPA’s Cabinet records exemption was a critical part of the balance the legislature struck between public access to information and necessary spheres of government confidentiality,” she wrote.
Justice Suzanne Côté wrote a concurrent decision for the case, which agreed that the mandate letters are exempt from disclosure but disagreed about the standard of review.
The Ontario government’s submissions in the case had argued the information and privacy commissioner took a “narrow and restrictive approach” interpreting “substance of deliberations,” which amounts to “an unwarranted incursion into the functioning of cabinet.”
They argued against the government’s interpretation of the legislation, saying it would lead to “absurd results” including keeping secret “any record that revealed that a particular topic had been identified by the premier as a policy priority.”
The original article contains 830 words, the summary contains 180 words. Saved 78%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!