Access-to-Information

Infrastructure Ontario and Metrolinx, both provincial mega-agencies using, exclusively, public-private infrastructure partnerships, have imposed a requirement on the public that is supposedly being served, according to a Toronto Star article (March 19).

An Ontario Divisional Court decision on a six-year-old battle at York University about secrecy in university real estate projects was published on September 1, 2022. The decision in York University Development Corporation vs. Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario et al. ended a long game in which the University tried to hide records that were legally accessible to the public.

Many groups in the Greater Toronto Area are challenging Metrolinx’ ambitious and largely evidence-free transit plans, in terms of transparency and accountability. Metrolinx is a very powerful agency spending many billions of public money. Like most other arms-length boards and agencies, it was structurally set up to diminish accountability -- to municipalities and also to citizens.

Many community groups are debating and challenging transit plans by Metrolinx, the powerful Ontario agency created to supplant municipalities in Southern Ontario.

Access to information (ATI) is animated by a simple principle: the public ought to know. Despite governments unfortunately tending towards secrecy and risk-aversion, a free flow of information is absolutely vital for democracy. ATI, then, is an important democratic safeguard, to mitigate the negative predilections of government and ensure a robust state of public discourse. ATI legislation first emerged in Sweden in 1766, but it wasn’t until the postwar era that it began to flourish in a number of other liberal democracies.

The justice system is facing unprecedented challenges. Like almost every other sector of society, the new realities of province-wide “social distancing” have raised fundamental questions about whether — and perhaps even how — courts and tribunals can continue to function in the age of the pandemic.