ORDER MO-1316
Appeal MA-990238-1
Township of King
NATURE OF THE APPEAL:
The appellant made a request to the Township of King (the Township) under the Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (the Act) for access to "all of the Township's files concerning the Ascot Estates at King property and the proposed estate residential development."
In particular, the appellant requested:
anything relating to Ascot's re-zoning application and to passage of the zoning by-law in regard to the Ascot Property, from August 1987 to the present;
anything relating to Ascot's application for an official plan amendment, and application for draft subdivision approval, in regard to the Ascot Property, from June 1988 to the present; and
anything pertaining or relating to the 1990-91 request to, and denial by, the Minister of Environment to review the proposed development of the Ascot Property under the Environmental Assessment Act.
The appellant also requested all correspondence between Council members, including the Mayor, and the various Township departments, particularly the Planning Department, the Public Works Department, and the Building Department, concerning the matters listed above from August 1987 to the present.
The Township located the records responsive to the request and granted access to a large number of them. The Township denied access to the remaining records pursuant to sections 6, 7, 12 and 14 of the Act. The Township also provided the appellant with a detailed index of the responsive records.
The appellant appealed the Township's decision to deny access.
During mediation, the Township and the appellant agreed to meet to review the general content of the withheld records, with a view to narrowing the records at issue in this appeal. As a result of this meeting, only 15 records remain at issue. The Township provided the appellant with a revised index containing only those records remaining at issue. Records 5 and 15 are duplicates and will, therefore be dealt with as a single record. Therefore, I will not refer to Record 15 again in this order, and my decision with respect to Record 5 will apply equally to Record 15. The appellant has agreed that the records identified in the amended index are the only records remaining at issue in this appeal.
By narrowing the records at issue in the appeal, the application of sections 6 and 14 of the Act are no longer at issue.
The Township claims that section 7(1) (advice or recommendations) applies to exempt those records numbered 5, 8, 10 and 14 as set out in the amended index. The Township indicates that it has applied section 12 (solicitor-client privilege) to all of the records remaining at issue.
In reviewing the records, I noted that Records 5 and 8 pertain to two engineering firms (the affected parties). Record 5 is a letter which was sent to the Township's solicitors from one firm and Record 8 is a letter which was sent to the Township by the same firm with a record pertaining to another firm attached. Because these two firms may have an interest in the disclosure of these two records, I raised the possible application of the mandatory exemption in section 10(1) of the Act in the Notice of Inquiry which I sent to the parties.
I sent a Notice of Inquiry, initially, to the Township and the affected parties. Representations were received from the Township. After reviewing its representations, I decided to move this inquiry to stage two and sought representations from the appellant. In doing so, I decided to seek representations from the appellant only with respect to the issue of the "communication privilege"