Stockwoods lawyers Justin Safayeni and Spencer Bass successfully resisted an application for judicial review brought by the Attorney General of Ontario, which sought to quash an order from the Information and Privacy Commissioner requiring that Ontario provide the CBC with Premier Doug Ford’s mandate letters to his cabinet. This is the first court case in Canada to consider whether government mandate letters are subject to the ‘cabinet records’ exemption in access-to-information legislation. The IPC concluded that on the evidence in this case, the mandate letters did not fall within that exemption and ordered them to be released. The Divisional Court agreed with the CBC’s position that the IPC’s decision was reasonable and rejected an expansive interpretation of the cabinet records exemption. You can read the decision here.
