Privacy commissioner slams handling of media information request

As Toronto prepared for a leaner local government following Ontario’s legal victory over the size of the city’s council, longtime politicians were being pitted against one another and newcomers worried about being heard in what’s now a highly competitive municipal election campaign.

A day after the province’s top court established a 25-ward race for October’s vote, incumbents and first-time candidates expressed apprehension about the new electoral landscape in Canada’s most populous city.

“The voters are confused, the staff aren’t sure what they’re doing, and I must say, the people in Toronto that I’m talking to are very upset,” said Coun. Paula Fletcher, who was among many registering as candidates at city hall on Thursday.

Toronto’s election campaign has been at the centre of a political storm for nearly two months, ever since Premier Doug Ford announced his plan to slash the city’s council from 47 seats to 25.

A judge initially found the plan unconstitutional, but the province’s top court sided with the government on Wednesday, suspending the earlier ruling and making clear that the city would elect 25 councillors on Oct. 22.

For Fletcher, a municipal veteran, fewer seats mean she’s now running against fellow Coun. Mary Fragedakis - a situation that’s playing out among several incumbents.

“Mary and I are friends, we have worked on a lot of issues together,” said Fletcher. “It’s hard ... The voters will decide which one of us they want to send back.”

Coun. John Campbell, a conservative councillor from a westToronto ward, will also be pitted against a colleague, one-term incumbent Stephen Holyday.

Campbell said Holyday has the benefit of name-recognition as the son of Doug Holyday, the former mayor of what was then the municipality of Etobicoke. But Campbell said he plans to stress his own approach to city issues when canvassing in the now-expanded ward.

“It’s very strange,” he said. “When I’m at the door I tell people, ‘listen, I know him and I like him,’ and then I point out a couple of points of difference.”

The council cut - which means there will be one councillor per approximately 109,000 residents - is likely to create extra work for those elected, Campbell said, noting councillors will have to sit on more boards and oversee more local agencies than before.

Architect Robert Venturi, who rejected austere modern design and instead ushered in postmodern complexity with the dictum “Less is a bore,” has died. He was 93.

His family released a statement on his firm’s website saying Venturi died at home in Philadelphia on Tuesday after a brief illness, surrounded by his wife, the architect Denise Scott Brown, and son, James Venturi.

He remained active well into his 80s at Venturi, Scott Brown & Associates, the architectural firm he founded in the 1960s. It’s now known as VSBA Architects + Planners.

Unlike the spare esthetic of modernists like Mies van der Rohe, Venturi’s work celebrated complexity and even inconsistency in design.

He encouraged architects and consumers to enjoy “messy vitality” in architecture - whether whimsical, sarcastic, humorous or honky-tonk.

Nova Scotia’s information and privacy commissioner says the provincial Health Department failed to make any reasonable effort to search for records related to a media freedom of information request related to the personal emails of former health minister Leo Glavine.

In an 18-page report released Thursday, Catherine Tully also says she was also blocked by a senior bureaucrat from interviewing Glavine’s former executive assistant during an investigation of a request for the information made by former Global News reporter Marieke Walsh in July 2017 — a request that was denied.

Tully says the “applicant journalist” asked for “all emails sent or received by then Health Minister Leo Glavine on his personal email account that are related to his mandate as a member of the executive council and or as health minister.”

She says the department claimed it had no control over personal email accounts, although Tully found that it still could have requested all records from the minister related to his departmental mandate as a cabinet minister.

Tully says the act governing freedom of information requests places a “positive duty” on public bodies to actively assist applicants. She says that didn’t happen in this case.

“In fact, the department made no effort to assist the applicant in any way until it made its offer to conduct a limited search in a communication to this office dated November 29, 2017 — four months after the original access to information requests and three months after access was denied,” the report states.

Tully said the evidence established that there is no standard practice or requirement by the provincial government for how government records found in personal email accounts are transferred into the government’s server system.

“There is no evidence that Minister Glavine was made aware of these access to information requests,” said Tully.