Briefly: Supreme Court of Canada decided cabinet mandate letters are protected from disclosure, after B.C. government lawyers intervened in Ontario’s Supreme Court challenge.
Bob Mackin
British Columbia has a new cabinet, but the Nov. 18-sworn NDP ministers do not have their mandate letters.
Premier David Eby said they are delayed while his single-seat majority NDP forges an alliance with the two Green MLAs.
B.C. Premier David Eby (left) and Ontario Premier Doug Ford at the 2024 Premiers’ meeting in Halifax (Canada’s Premiers/Flickr)
Eby said after the Government House ceremony that the post-Oct. 19 election priorities are housing affordability, healthcare, community safety and economic growth.
“That is the consistent set of priorities for every single minister for the detailed mandate letters,” Eby told reporters, without setting a date for publishing the letters.
Will it be a case of one set of mandate letters for cabinet eyes only and another version for public consumption?
Under the freedom of information law, a CBC reporter unsuccessfully sought Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s marching orders for his ministers after the 2018 election. The Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario intervened and ordered their release. But Ford’s government appealed.
Last February, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that Ontario’s cabinet mandate letters would stay secret because releasing them would reveal the substance of deliberations of cabinet, which relies on confidentiality.
The judge who wrote the majority decision, Justice Andromache Karakatsanis, was the cabinet secretary under Ontario Premier Mike Harris from 2000 to 2002. Vincent Gogolek, the former executive director of the B.C. Freedom of Information and Privacy Association, called it a win for government secrecy.
Three B.C. government lawyers intervened in the case. They filed their statement with the Supreme Court the week after Eby became premier in November 2022.
B.C. officially took no position specific to Ford’s mandate letters, but agreed with Ontario, “that statutory protections for cabinet information and documents should be widely construed.”
“The [Ford cabinet] mandate letters were not publicly disclosed or prepared for the public’s consumption as a public relations document, and there is evidence that they were handed out at a cabinet meeting and appeared on the cabinet meeting agenda,” said the B.C. government submission.
In 2001, Gordon Campbell was the first B.C. premier to issue mandate letters. Campbell also briefly held open meetings of the BC Liberal cabinet.
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