The Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing (the ministry) received a request under the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (the Act) for access to records relating to the withdrawals of land from the Greenbelt Plan. To date, the ministry has not issued a final access decision in response to the request. An appeal was made to the IPC and Appeal file PA23-00098 was opened to determine the issue of the ministry’s deemed refusal under section 29(4) of the Act.
In light of the Auditor General’s observations in her Special Report on Changes to the Greenbelt, the appeal file was moved to the adjudication stage. In this interim order, the adjudicator finds that the Auditor General’s observations regarding the use of personal email accounts by political staff and their record retention practices, provide reasonable grounds for the belief that records responsive to the appellant’s request may be irretrievably lost or destroyed. Accordingly, the adjudicator orders the ministry to take steps to secure the preservation and recovery of responsive records within its custody or control, in accordance with its duties set out in section 10.1 of the Act and the Archives and Recordkeeping Act, 2006.