The legislature’s fiscal watchdog says the Liberal government is getting between him and the information he needs to do his job, which is supplying MPPs with the economic and financial analysis they need to do their jobs.

Financial Accountability Officer Stephen LeClair has been butting heads with the government over obtaining revenue and spending projections – including forecasts about the government’s cap-and-trade system and the Hydro One sell-off. The watchdog says ministries continue to use an “overly broad interpretation” of a loophole in access to information law, and wrongly so, which allows the government to keep records under wraps that they feel may divulge deliberations by Premier Kathleen Wynne’s cabinet.

While LeClair agrees with the cabinet exemption in principle, he says he’s just looking for the background information.

“However, I believe that this is political direction on how to interpret cabinet confidences,” said LeClair on Tuesday at Queen’s Park.

The FAO told reporters he did not know where the direction was coming from, but said the heavy use of the cabinet exception makes it tough for him to assess the government’s financial projections and sniff out potential risks to the province's bottom line.

This wasn’t the first time LeClair had publicly aired his problems about obtaining records. In releasing a medium-term fiscal forecast earlier in May, the watchdog warned he’d just adopted the government’s spending projections because they hadn’t given them any information to analyze.

“It is highly disappointing that, instead of looking to maximize the information that the government can provide to MPPs and through them all Ontarians, the government is focusing on how it can restrict disclosure of information,” LeClair said in a statement issued on Tuesday. “In doing so, they are impeding the ability of MPPs to perform their constitutional duties of holding the government to account.”

Finance Minister Charles Sousa said in a statement that all requests for information from the FAO are dealt with by “non-partisan officials.”

“There is no politics involved in the relationships that we have with regards to working with the FAO,” Sousa told reporters. “There’s been no political direction.”

The Finance Minister’s statement said the government would send a directive to all offices to ensure they’re responding to the FAO “in a consistent and timely manner.”

LeClair floated a few possible remedies to the situation, such as limiting the cabinet exception and giving the FAO the power to access the cabinet records, an ability the auditor general already has.

NDP finance critic Catherine Fife said she would be introducing a private member’s bill that does just that – giving the FAO the same powers as the auditor general.

“We’re dealing with a house of cards here in this legislature on the funding,” Fife said. “The fact that this government is using political direction to prevent an independent officer from doing his job is of great concern to us and the people of this province.”

Progressive Conservative finance critic Vic Fedeli said it seems the only way MPPs get “true” information from the government is via a cabinet leak or an Ontario Provincial Police criminal investigation. “This is a long pattern of doing what’s best for the Liberal party as opposed to what’s best for the people of Ontario.”

LeClair noted that his enabling legislation lets him go to Speaker Dave Levac and the chair of the finance and economic affairs committee if he thinks a ministry is dragging its feet in supply information.

“I am prepared to exercise that power where a ministry has failed to offer adequate justification for refusing to provide me with information, whether under the Cabinet records exception or otherwise,” LeClair said. “Although I have not yet reached that point with respect to any particular information request, I have taken note of the broader pattern of unsatisfying justification for refusals of access to information.”

The FAO said he’s been able to develop some “workaround” solutions, but that he would see how the matter progresses and make a decision on whether to blow the whistle after the summer.

To contact the reporter on this story:
gzochodne@qpbriefing.com
416-212-5913
Twitter: @geoffzochodne

Fiscal watchdog howls over roadblocks to information requests

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