The Municipality of Chatham-Kent is being forced to let go of some information related to matters discussed in a closed council session in 2016.
A media release sent from the municipality stated that the Information and Privacy Commissioner (IPC) of Ontario has ruled against the municipality for not releasing a page of statistics in a Freedom of Information (FOI) application.
The application in question had been related to preliminary Fire-Paramedic costing models that were discussed during a closed council session back in June 2016.
An FOI typically takes 30 days to process. The municipality says they released several pages at the time of the request, however, one spreadsheet was left out. The page had "employee-specific information regarding costing ambulance service as a stand-alone model or blending it with fire services."
“We believed the information was confidential on the basis of involving a third party and that its disclosure could place the municipality at a competitive disadvantage in future discussions regarding the service,” says CAO Don Shropshire in a statement. “The Privacy Commissioner’s office has ruled otherwise and we have complied with the ruling.”
Of the hundreds of FOI applications made since 2011, Shropshire says this is the first time the municipality has been ordered to release information.
“In every single instance prior to this, the Commissioner has ruled that the municipality has acted in accordance with law," he says. "We take our commitment to transparency seriously and our record demonstrates that.”
