The Royal Canadian Mounted Police wouldn't say on Friday if findings by Ontario's government-transparency oversight office would be used in its Greenbelt investigation.
Ontario's Information and Privacy Commissioner (IPC) Patricia Kosseim released a special report on Thursday on Premier Doug Ford's government's handling of records related to the Greenbelt scandal. Kosseim found government officials' use of code words in communications about the plan violated "legal record-keeping obligations," and that her wider findings "offer a clear example and cautionary tale about the consequences of inadequate recordkeeping."
The commissioner also compared her observations to those in a report by her office 12 years ago on the Liberal government's gas plants scandal, which ultimately resulted in premier Dalton McGuinty's chief of staff going to jail.
The RCMP has been investigating whether the process that led to the Ford government's Greenbelt removals involved a criminal element since fall 2023. The summer beforehand, the Ford government's plan to remove 15 parcels of land, containing 7,400 acres, from Greenbelt protections to allow their development collapsed under a scandal around connections many of the developers who stood to profit had to the premier and his Progressive Conservatives.
Kosseim said on Thursday that the RCMP hasn't contacted her office.
In response to questions about whether the national police service planned to, it wouldn't say, nor would it provide any more information about its ongoing investigation.
"Be assured that the RCMP is conducting a thorough investigation," the media relations unit of the RCMP's central region for Ontario wrote in an email. "That investigation is ongoing. To protect the integrity of the investigation, we cannot provide information at this time. The RCMP must ensure that criminal investigations are not compromised by sharing information publicly."
Gas plants parallels
The previous Liberal government's gas plants scandal was rooted in the McGuinty government's cancellation of two gas-fired power plants that it had previously contracted companies to build. The plants' cancellations were initially popular in the communities where they were planned, Mississauga and Oakville, and the Liberals won seats in those areas in the 2011 election. A few years later, the province's auditor general estimated that their cancellation and relocation would cost over $1 billion — which the then-opposition PCs and NDP would later bludgeon the Liberal government with as being the price of a politically driven decision.
McGuinty's Liberals were re-elected in the 2011 election, winning a minority at Queen's Park. Throughout 2012, opposition MPPs attempted in various ways to compel the government to release records showing the decision-making leading to the gas plants' cancellation.
McGuinty resigned in October 2012, amid the scandal. Kathleen Wynne won the ensuing Liberal leadership contest, becoming premier in February 2013.
A few months later, then-IPC Ann Cavoukian released her office's Deleting Accountability report, focusing on the Liberal government's handling of records related to its gas plants decisions.
"I concluded that the practice of indiscriminate deletion of all emails sent and received by the former chief of staff (to McGuinty) was in violation of the Archives and Recordkeeping Act, 2006 (ARA) and the records retention schedule developed by Archives of Ontario for ministers’ offices," Cavoukian wrote in her 2013 report. "In my view, this practice also undermined the purposes of the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA), and the transparency and accountability principles that form the foundation of both Acts."
The OPP launched its criminal investigation into the gas plants scandal, including the destruction of government emails, days after Cavoukian released her report. A few months later, Cavoukian wrote in a followup addendum that her office was "co-operating fully with the OPP."
In her special Greenbelt report, Kosseim wrote that the concerns she had with the Ford government's handling of Greenbelt records "were already articulated in the IPC's 2013 special report, Deleting Accountability."
"These lessons of more than a decade ago have come back full circle," Kosseim, the IPC since 2020, added in her report.
The IPC is the third parliamentary oversight officer to release a report relating to the Ford government's Greenbelt removals.
The earliest, then-auditor general Bonnie Lysyk, found in her investigation that "emails were regularly being deleted by political staff," and that political staff had used their personal email accounts and devices to communicate with lobbyists for developers. Kosseim noted in her report that she had concerns about these practices as well, and that there was a "near-total absence of decision-making documentation" relating to the Greenbelt changes. The commissioner also wrote that government officials' practices of using "opaque codewords ... violate legal record-keeping obligations."
Kosseim's Greenbelt records-related work is still ongoing, as well. Her office is still processing some of the appeals that its special report, released within its 2024 annual report, was based on. For some, IPC staff are still working with the government and former staffers to retrieve records to better explain the decision-making that led to the Greenbelt removals.
On Thursday, Kosseim said she wasn't planning to reach out to the RCMP to help with its investigation, but didn't rule out co-operating with the police either.
“I certainly can’t speculate about that,” she said. “So it’s not really a question that I can answer in the abstract.”
