The Supreme Court of Canada will hear the Ontario government’s appeal on whether or not it will be able to keep PC Leader Doug Ford’s mandate letters secret.
Had Canada’s top court refused to hear the case, the provincial government would have had to release Ford’s 23 mandate letters — which, combined, run about 150 pages — to CBC News today.
With today’s decision, there’s no chance of the mandate letters being made public before the Ontario election, now two weeks away on June 2.
Mandate letters traditionally lay out the marching orders a premier has for each of his or her ministers after taking office — and have been routinely released by governments across the country.
Ford’s government, however, has been fighting to keep his mandate letters from the public for nearly four years. CBC Toronto filed a freedom of information request for the records in July 2018, shortly after Ford took office. The government denied access in full, arguing the letters were exempt from disclosure as cabinet records.
Despite being ordered to release the records by Ontario’s former information and privacy commissioner in 2019 and having its appeals of that decision dismissed at every level of court so far — the province utilized its final option to prevent disclosure in March by seeking leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada.
When asked why his government has kept up the fight to keep his mandate letters secret for four years on Thursday, Ford told CBC News “it’s not secret.”
“Everyone knows where we stand,” said Ford. “I’m out here every single day, moving forward it’s going to be very very clear, what we’re doing. We’re going to continue to build — build roads, hospitals, highways, schools. We’re getting it done and it’s going to be as clear and transparent as you can get.”
WATCH | Ford says letters aren’t being kept secret:
Doug Ford responds to Supreme Court opting to hear mandate letter case
2 hours ago
Duration 0:33
PC leader says what’s in the letters his government has spent years fighting the release of is ‘not that secret.’
Delaying the release of the mandate letters until after the election is the only reason James Turk, director of Toronto Metropolitan University’s Centre for Free Expression, can think of to explain why the province appealed again.
“Whatever is in the mandate letters, they don’t want it out,” Turk told CBC News after the application was filed. “It’s a total waste of money — they’ve lost at every level.”
In a statement issued Thursday, the provincial Liberal party questioned what exactly Ford is trying to keep out of the public eye.
“The only credible answer is that he knows what’s hidden in those letters would lose him the election,” the statement reads. “It’s the same reason he hides his candidates and orders them to refuse local debates. Because he knows they would lose their local elections if they were accountable to the public and the media.”
Ontario court previously ruled letters should be released
In the government’s application, counsel argued the Supreme Court should hear the case because it raises issues of public importance, such as what constitutes cabinet deliberations.
“This will also be the first time this honourable court will consider the constitutional role of the premier in setting cabinet’s agenda and address whether the premier’s deliberations can reveal the substance of deliberations of cabinet,” the notice of application reads.
Ontario’s Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act states that any records that “would reveal the substance of deliberations of the executive council or its committee” are exempt from disclosure under what’s commonly referred to as the cabinet record exemption.
James Turk, director of Toronto Metropolitan University’s Centre for Free Expression, says access to future records is also at stake in the mandate letters case. (Zoom)
But in a 2-1 ruling released in January, the Ontario Court of Appeal found that both the privacy commissioner’s original decision, and the Divisional Court’s review of it, were reasonable in finding that mandate letters do not reveal the substance of cabinet deliberations and so must be disclosed.
“The letters are the culmination of [the] deliberative process,” wrote Justice Lorne Sossin.
“While they highlight the decisions the premier ultimately made, they do not shed light on the process used to make those decisions or the alternatives rejected along the way.
“Accordingly, the letters do not threaten to divulge cabinet’s deliberative process or its formulation of policies.”
Supreme court ruling will have ‘major impact’
Turk argues the stakes remain high — even though the appeal will be heard — because the cabinet records exemption is one of the most common ways governments withhold information under access to information legislation.
“It will have a major impact,” he told CBC News. “This is going to be a very important case for the public’s right to information in this country, because the Supreme Court will be able to use this case to be clear about what it considers the proper boundaries for cabinet secrecy.”
The privacy commissioner’s initial decision, and all of the court rulings so far in this case have supported a narrower interpretation of the boundaries of cabinet secrecy, which differentiates between deliberations and their results.
“[Cabinet] discussion needs to be protected, their conclusions do not,” said Turk. “To deny the cabinet’s conclusions to the public is, in effect, denying the public the right to know what their government is going to be doing.”
For Turk, the Ontario government’s interpretation treats cabinet secrecy “like this big black hole, where anything that comes anywhere close to the cabinet falls into the black hole and can be kept from the public for years.”
The Supreme Court of Canada will release its decision on whether or not it will hear the Ontario government’s appeal to keep Doug Ford’s mandate letters secret Thursday morning. (Justin Tang/The Canadian Press)
It’s unclear how many tax dollars and government resources have gone toward denying the public access to the mandate letters.
For more than two years, CBC News has been trying to obtain information on how much time Crown attorneys have devoted to the mandate letter case. The Ministry of the Attorney General has denied two freedom of information requests, claiming attorney-client privilege.
The latest request, which asked for the total number of hours counsel have spent on the case from July 2018 to July 2021, is now in the adjudication stage with the privacy commissioner.
‘Keep them to ourselves as long as possible’
Documents obtained by CBC News concerning its original freedom of information request for the mandate letters make it clear that senior officials inside the Ford government planned to keep the records from public view from the outset.
In an email dated July 31, 2018, the then-executive director of policy to the premier, Greg Harrington, says, “here’s the letters. As I said, the intention is to keep them to ourselves as long as possible.”
Ford issued a new set of mandate letters to his cabinet ministers in the fall of last year.
CBC News filed a freedom of information request for the records, which was denied.
The decision cited the cabinet record exemption in the provincial privacy act, along with three new exemptions for advice to government, solicitor-client privilege and records that “affect the economic or other interests of Ontario.”
CBC News has appealed the decision to the privacy commissioner.
NEW YORK (AP) — Teen smoking hit an all-time low in the U.S. this year, part of a big drop in the youth use of tobacco overall, the government reported Thursday.
There was a 20% drop in the estimated number of middle and high school students who recently used at least one tobacco product, including cigarettes, electronic cigarettes, nicotine pouches and hookahs. The number went from 2.8 million last year to 2.25 million this year — the lowest since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s key survey began in 1999.
“Reaching a 25-year low for youth tobacco product use is an extraordinary milestone for public health,” said Deirdre Lawrence Kittner, director of CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health, in a statement. However, “our mission is far from complete.”
A previously reported drop in vaping largely explains the overall decline in tobacco use from 10% to about 8% of students, health officials said.
The youth e-cigarette rate fell to under 6% this year, down from 7.7% last year — the lowest at any point in the last decade. E-cigarettes are the most commonly used tobacco products among teens, followed by nicotine pouches.
Use of other products has been dropping, too.
Twenty-five years ago, nearly 30% of high school students smoked. This year, it was just 1.7%, down from the 1.9%. That one-year decline is so small it is not considered statistically significant, but marks the lowest since the survey began 25 years ago. The middle school rate also is at its lowest mark.
Recent use of hookahs also dropped, from 1.1% to 0.7%.
The results come from an annual CDC survey, which included nearly 30,000 middle and high school students at 283 schools. The response rate this year was about 33%.
Officials attribute the declines to a number of measures, ranging from price increases and public health education campaigns to age restrictions and more aggressive enforcement against retailers and manufacturers selling products to kids.
Among high school students, use of any tobacco product dropped to 10%, from nearly 13% and e-cigarette use dipped under 8%, from 10%. But there was no change reported for middle school students, who less commonly vape or smoke or use other products,
Current use of tobacco fell among girls and Hispanic students, but rose among American Indian or Alaska Native students. And current use of nicotine pouches increased among white kids.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
WASHINGTON (AP) — An Alabama man was arrested Thursday for his alleged role in the January hack of a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission social media account that led the price of bitcoin to spike, the Justice Department said.
Eric Council Jr., 25, of Athens, is accused of helping to break into the SEC’s account on X, formerly known as Twitter, allowing the hackers to prematurely announce the approval of long-awaited bitcoin exchange-traded funds.
The price of bitcoin briefly spiked more than $1,000 after the post claimed “The SEC grants approval for #Bitcoin ETFs for listing on all registered national securities exchanges.”
But soon after the initial post appeared, SEC Chairman Gary Gensler said on his personal account that the SEC’s account was compromised. “The SEC has not approved the listing and trading of spot bitcoin exchange-traded products,” Gensler wrote, calling the post unauthorized without providing further explanation.
Authorities say Council carried out what’s known as a “SIM swap,” using a fake ID to impersonate someone with access to the SEC’s X account and convince a cellphone store to give him a SIM card linked to the person’s phone. Council was able to take over the person’s cellphone number and get access codes to the SEC’s X account, which he shared with others who broke into the account and sent the post, the Justice Department says.
Prosecutors say after Council returned the iPhone he used for the SIM swap, his online searches included: “What are the signs that you are under investigation by law enforcement or the FBI even if you have not been contacted by them.”
An email seeking comment was sent Thursday to an attorney for Council, who is charged in Washington’s federal court with conspiracy to commit aggravated identity theft and access device fraud.
The price of bitcoin swung from about $46,730 to just below $48,000 after the unauthorized post hit on Jan. 9 and then dropped to around $45,200 after the SEC’s denial. The SEC officially approved the first exchange-traded funds that hold bitcoin the following day.
Google, Meta and TikTok have removed social media accounts belonging to an industrial plant in Russia’s Tatarstan region aimed at recruiting young foreign women to make drones for Moscow’s war in Ukraine.
Posts on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok were taken down following an investigation by The Associated Press published Oct. 10 that detailed working conditions in the drone factory in the Alabuga Special Economic Zone, which is under U.S. and British sanctions.
Videos and other posts on the social media platforms promised the young women, who are largely from Africa, a free plane ticket to Russia and a salary of more than $500 a month following their recruitment via the program called “Alabuga Start.”
But instead of a work-study program in areas like hospitality and catering, some of them said they learned only arriving in the Tatarstan region that they would be toiling in a factory to make weapons of war, assembling thousands of Iranian-designed attack drones to be launched into Ukraine.
In interviews with AP, some of the women who worked in the complex complained of long hours under constant surveillance, of broken promises about wages and areas of study, and of working with caustic chemicals that left their skin pockmarked and itching. AP did not identify them by name or nationality out of concern for their safety.
The tech companies also removed accounts for Alabuga Polytechnic, a vocational boarding school for Russians aged 16-18 and Central Asians aged 18-22 that bills its graduates as experts in drone production.
The accounts collectively had at least 158,344 followers while one page on TikTok had more than a million likes.
In a statement, YouTube said its parent company Google is committed to sanctions and trade compliance and “after review and consistent with our policies, we terminated channels associated with Alabuga Special Economic Zone.”
Meta said it removed accounts on Facebook and Instagram that “violate our policies.” The company said it was committed to complying with sanctions laws and said it recognized that human exploitation is a serious problem which required a multifaceted approach, including at Meta.
It said it had teams dedicated to anti-trafficking efforts and aimed to remove those seeking to abuse its platforms.
TikTok said it removed videos and accounts which violated its community guidelines, which state it does not allow content that is used for the recruitment of victims, coordination of their transport, and their exploitation using force, fraud, coercion, or deception.
The women aged 18-22 were recruited to fill an urgent labor shortage in wartime Russia. They are from places like Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, South Sudan, Sierra Leone and Nigeria, as well as the South Asian country of Sri Lanka. The drive also is expanding to elsewhere in Asia as well as Latin America.
Accounts affiliated to Alabuga with tens of thousands of followers are still accessible on Telegram, which did not reply to a request for comment. The plant’s management also did not respond to AP.
The Alabuga Start recruiting drive used a robust social media campaign of slickly edited videos with upbeat music that show African women smiling while cleaning floors, wearing hard hats while directing cranes, and donning protective equipment to apply paint or chemicals.
Videos also showed them enjoying Tatarstan’s cultural sites or playing sports. None of the videos made it clear the women would be working in a drone manufacturing complex.
Online, Alabuga promoted visits to the industrial area by foreign dignitaries, including some from Brazil, Sri Lanka and Burkina Faso.
In a since-deleted Instagram post, a Turkish diplomat who visited the plant had compared Alabuga Polytechnic to colleges in Turkey and pronounced it “much more developed and high-tech.”
According to Russian investigative outlets Protokol and Razvorot, some pupils at Alabuga Polytechnic are as young as 15 and have complained of poor working conditions.
Videos previously on the platforms showed the vocational school students in team-building exercises such as “military-patriotic” paintball matches and recreating historic Soviet battles while wearing camouflage.
Last month, Alabuga Start said on Telegram its “audience has grown significantly!”
That could be due to its hiring of influencers, who promoted the site on TikTok and Instagram as an easy way for young women to make money after leaving school.
TikTok removed two videos promoting Alabuga after publication of the AP investigation.
Experts told AP that about 90% of the women recruited via the Alabuga Start program work in drone manufacturing.
