Government officials’ deletion of emails and use of codewords, personal accounts and devices leading up to the 2022 Greenbelt removals ran contrary to “legal record-keeping obligations” and undermined trust in the plan, Ontario’s transparency watchdog determined.
Premier Doug Ford’s government’s handling of records relating to its plan to develop the Greenbelt serves as “a clear example and cautionary tale about the consequences of inadequate recordkeeping,” wrote Information and Privacy Commissioner Patricia Kosseim in a new report.
Officials’ “use of opaque codewords … not only violate legal record-keeping obligations, they also erode public trust in the integrity of government decision-making,” states Kosseim’s special report on the government’s Greenbelt record-keeping and transparency.
Many records that could help illuminate the public on how the Ford government came up with its since-reversed Greenbelt removals remain missing due to their deletion, underdocumentation, and staffers’ use of personal accounts and devices, according to Kosseim’s office’s findings.
“It was surprising to find so few responsive records documenting any government decisions or actions, how and when they were made, and by whom,” Kosseim wrote. “The near-total absence of decision-making documentation is particularly concerning, especially on a file as high profile and consequential as changes to the Greenbelt.”
The commissioner also added that the concerns she observed “were already articulated” by her office in its 2013 Deleting Accountability report, which focused on the province’s previous Liberal government’s handling of records related to its cancellation of two gas plants.
The Ontario Provincial Police launched a criminal investigation days after the Deleting Accountability report was published. The investigation eventually resulted in former premier Dalton McGuinty’s chief of staff going to jail over charges related to the deletion of emails.
“(Deleting Accountability) … exposed systemic failures in record-keeping and highlighted the risks of improper deletion and lack of retention of key government records,” Kosseim wrote in the report her office released on Thursday. “These lessons of more than a decade ago have come back full circle.”
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police have been investigating for over a year and a half whether the Greenbelt scandal involved a criminal element. Kosseim’s office hasn’t been contacted by the RCMP about it, she said in an interview on Thursday.
The privacy commissioner’s office, under a previous commissioner, co-operated with the police who investigated the former Liberal government’s gas plants scandal.
Kosseim told The Trillium on Thursday that she isn't planning to reach out to the RCMP to help with its investigation but didn't rule out co-operating with the police service either.
“I certainly can’t speculate about that,” Kosseim said in response to being asked whether she and her office would co-operate with the RCMP, if it contacted them. “So it’s not really a question that I can answer in the abstract.”
Kosseim’s special Greenbelt report was the result of work her office embarked on over a year ago and was based on observations the office made while handling 19 appeals of freedom-of-information requests for Greenbelt-related records made to the government.
Some of the appellants’ cases remain active, including one that’s the subject of a judicial review and others in which records-seekers continue to work with the commissioner’s office and the government to retrieve yet-to-be-found or undisclosed documents.
Records that have been appealed for include any that could potentially better indicate the role premier’s office officials had in selecting Greenbelt lands for removal.
“The end story of whether or not a record will be found … and ultimately ordered to be delivered — yes, we will report on that in due course,” Kosseim said.
Despite Greenbelt-related appeals still being ongoing, the commissioner said her office wanted to publish its findings to date as part of its larger 2024 annual report, as it did on Thursday.
Kosseim also didn’t rule out the possibility that her office could use its summons powers toward individuals who aren’t cooperative with orders it has made for so-far missing Greenbelt records. “We won’t hesitate to do so if it comes to that,” the commissioner said. “It’s our hope that those individuals will cooperate with their former employers in order to provide whatever responsive records there are.”
The Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario’s examination of the government’s Greenbelt record-keeping and transparency was prompted by a request from NDP and official Opposition Leader Marit Stiles.
“Deleting government records is illegal,” Stiles said in a statement the NDP published after Kosseim’s report was released on Thursday. “The last time this happened, someone went to jail. Enough hiding, it’s time for the premier to come clean.”
“The IPC’s report confirms that the Ford government has gone to great lengths to cover up the corruption involved in the Greenbelt land removals,” Green leader Mike Schreiner added in a statement his party published.
The premier’s office said in its own statement, “We will continue to comply with our obligations under the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act and the Archives and Recordkeeping Act.”
“As the commissioner lays out in this report, the government has taken a number of positive steps to strengthen record-keeping practices,” added the premier’s office.
Kosseim’s office’s work also piggybacked on concerns that Ontario’s auditor general and integrity commissioner each highlighted a couple of years ago about the Ford government’s handling of records relating to its since-reversed Greenbelt land removals. The investigative findings that their offices released separately in August 2023 “revealed serious flaws in the decision-making and record-keeping processes, raising concerns about transparency, fairness, and legal compliance,” Kosseim wrote in her report.
One of the auditor general’s observations that Kosseim’s report specifically calls back to was that “emails were regularly being deleted by political staff,” contrary to Ontario law: the Archives and Record Keeping Act.
One of the IPC’s main responsibilities is to review, adjudicate, and decide appeals of freedom-of-information requests. Dozens, if not more, freedom-of-information requests for records related to the Greenbelt removals have been made to the province by journalists, researchers, political operatives, and other members of the public since 2022.
The IPC received 30 appeals related to the Greenbelt in 2022 and 2023. Responding to the auditor general’s findings and one of the earliest Greenbelt-related appeals, the IPC issued “an exceptional pre-emptive order” to the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing to take steps to preserve all its records related to the land removals, Kosseim’s report explains.
Ford apologized for removing land from the Greenbelt in September 2023, before completing the return of the properties to the protected area that fall. The two earlier watchdog investigations, released the month before, escalated the controversy around the move to a full-blown scandal. Findings by them and the media, including this outlet and others, showed that many of the developers who could have been enriched by the land removals had close ties to Ford’s Progressive Conservatives, including the premier himself.
This story was updated at 4:10 p.m. to include comments from an interview with Information and Privacy Commissioner Patricia Kosseim and more information from her report.
