In 3 years, Crown lawyers spent 1,672 hours keeping Doug Ford's leaked mandate letters secret

Between July 2018 and July 2021, Ontario Crown lawyers dedicated 1,672 taxpayer-funded hours to the province's case to keep Premier Doug Ford's now-leaked mandate letters secret.

That figure adds up to 209 eight-hour work days, or about 10 months of 40-hour work weeks, within three years.

Mandate letters traditionally lay out the marching orders a premier has for his or her ministers after taking office — and are routinely released by governments across the country. 

But the Ford government has gone to great lengths to keep the premier's 2018 letters secret by appealing court orders to disclose the records all the way up to Canada's top court. Despite those efforts, Global News reported Monday that one of its reporters was leaked a copy of all 23 of Ford's 2018 mandate letters. 

Until recently, the Ford government has also been refusing to say how many hours Crown counsel spent working on the case. Less than a week before a June 20 judicial review hearing, the government dropped its appeal of a decision from Ontario's Information and Privacy Commissioner (IPC) ordering it to disclose the number of hours to CBC Toronto, and it provided the figure by email.

The government filed the appeal for judicial review to Ontario's Divisional Court in August 2022. In its application, the Ministry of the Attorney General argued the Crown hours were covered by solicitor-client privilege and that by seeing the total number of hours CBC Toronto could deduce privileged information, like litigation strategy for the mandate letters case.

CBC Toronto asked the government why it dropped its appeal, but the province didn't answer the question. Instead, a spokesperson for the Attorney General sent an emailed statement saying government lawyers are salaried employees and don't bill at an hourly rate. 

"The number of hours worked on this case are not unusual for a matter that is now before the Supreme Court of Canada," said spokesperson Andrew Kennedy. 

"The Supreme Court of Canada only deals with issues of public importance and last year chose to hear less than seven per cent of all cases referred to them. We look forward to their decision on this matter."

Shortly after Ford was first elected, CBC Toronto filed a freedom of information (FOI) request for his mandate letters to Cabinet ministers. The Ontario government denied the request, so CBC Toronto filed a $25 appeal to the IPC, which ordered the government to release the mandate letters. 

Ever since, the government has tasked Crown lawyers with appealing the IPC decision to higher and higher levels of court — all the way up to Canada's top court.

The time frame for the 1,672 Crown lawyer hours spans the initial FOI request in July 2018 and subsequent appeals to the IPC, the Divisional Court, and some of the submissions to the Ontario Court of Appeal. The scope ends in July 2021, before the hearing at the province's top court. 

"This government is prioritizing suppressing information," said Ontario NDP leader Marit Stiles. 

"They have spent as far as I can see about 209 eight-hour work days of Crown lawyer time and that's expensive — that's a hell of a lot of money and resources that could be spent on other important things that are more in touch with where Ontarians priorities are."