EDITOR’S NOTE: This article originally appeared on The Trillium, a Village Media website devoted to covering provincial politics at Queen’s Park.
Ontario’s privacy commissioner has ordered the Ministry of the Solicitor General to turn over records of provincial police who worked at Premier Doug Ford’s house when he hosted a pre-wedding fundraiser in 2022 that was infamously attended by developers and lobbyists.
The Information and Privacy Commissioner’s (IPC) office issued the order after the Ministry of the Solicitor General refused to give it copies of the records as part of its work to determine whether to review its decision not to release them to The Trillium in response to a freedom-of-information request.
Early last November, The Trillium reported on the contents of emails between Toronto Police Service (TPS) staff that showed the OPP asked for “a uniformed presence” of local police at Ford’s Etobicoke home on the evening of Aug. 11, 2022, when he hosted the now-infamous stag and doe ahead of his daughter’s wedding. Toronto Police Supt. Ron Taverner, a friend of Ford’s, sent an email advising that the local police not do so since the event was a “private function and a fundraiser.”
A spokesperson for the Toronto Police said in a statement to The Trillium that ultimately “there were no on-duty resources assigned to the premier’s residence on Aug. 11, 2022.”
As Ontario’s premier, Ford is oftentimes under the protection of a small group of OPP officers who serve as his personal security detail. Local police are sometimes asked to supplement the OPP’s security detail, which the OPP reimburses them for the costs of providing.
“Premier’s office staff do not direct any decisions related to the premier’s security detail,” a spokesperson of Ford’s said last fall.
The OPP wouldn’t say whether any more of its officers than usual were assigned to the premier’s home at the time of the stag and doe, with a spokesperson saying “we cannot discuss operational matters related to protected persons.”
“I can tell you that the OPP gathers as much information as possible about all situations in which a protected person will be involved and then deploy any resources deemed necessary to fulfil our duties,” OPP spokesperson Bill Dickson told The Trillium in a Nov. 2 email.
Emails between TPS staff showing they were asked to provide officers at the stag and doe were obtained by The Trillium in response to a freedom-of-information request. That request, and others seeking information about the official police presence at the stag and doe, were filed to the TPS and Ministry of the Solicitor General last May.
In late June, the Ministry of the Solicitor General decided it would not grant records in response to a request for details about how many OPP worked at, or near, Ford’s home around the time of the stag and doe party, along with the officers’ communications from that time. In the decision, a member of the ministry’s FOI-processing staff cited eight subsections of the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act that allow it not to disclose records if it deems doing so could interfere with law enforcement matters or violate someone’s privacy.
A few weeks later, The Trillium appealed the ministry’s decision to the privacy commissioner’s office. The privacy commissioner’s office mediates and adjudicates disagreements between those who request records via the freedom-of-information system and the government. In some cases, the office also decides whether records are released.
The privacy commissioner’s office can ask to review records that are blocked from release to determine whether or not they were kept private for legitimate reasons.
According to the March 15 order signed by assistant commissioner Warren Mar, his office and the Ministry of the Solicitor General had “several exchanges” about the records, and the ministry indicated it would prefer the IPC visit the ministry’s office to review them in person.
The ministry told the commissioner’s office that the records were “highly sensitive” — but did not say how so — and that it wouldn’t provide copies of them unless ordered to, which the ministry also said it would comply with, the March 15 order notes.
“It is our position that both the (Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy) Act and the (IPC) Code (of Procedure) support our long-standing approach of having staff at the IPC attend the ministry offices to examine highly sensitive records such as the ones at issue in this appeal,” the ministry told the privacy commissioner’s office.
Assistant commissioner Mar’s order also states that his office “must be able to retain a copy” of them to determine whether they should, or shouldn’t, be released to The Trillium.
By the time this story was published on Monday, spokespeople from Solicitor General Michael Kerzner's office and the ministry he oversees hadn't responded to questions about the ministry's reluctance to provide the records to the privacy commissioner.
In early 2023, reporting on the stag and doe party ignited months of drama at Queen’s Park, including by escalating the Greenbelt scandal. It factored into both the auditor general’s and integrity commissioner’s Greenbelt investigations, with the latter oversight office finding that two developers owning land involved in the scandal either attended the stag and doe or bought tickets, which were $150 each.
Revelations from the auditor general's and integrity commissioner's Greenbelt reports were significant in precipitating Ford's walkback of the plan to remove land from the protected area.
Integrity Commissioner J. David Wake ultimately declined to pursue a full-fledged investigation into the stag and doe and Ford’s daughter’s wedding that followed it, which NDP Leader Marit Stiles had requested.
In his final report on Ford's daughter's wedding festivities, Wake wrote that to continue investigating he needed to reach the “reasonable and probable grounds” threshold required by the ethics law for MPPs, which is “more than having a ‘reasonable suspicion.’” Wake also highlighted in an earlier report that the Members’ Integrity Act section around receiving gifts “does not apply to gifts received from third parties to an adult child of the member or her spouse,” as was the case at the stag and doe.
Wake added, as well, that the ethics law “does not concern itself with appearances of a conflict, only actual conflicts,” and "that there was nothing inherently wrong in inviting Progressive Conservative Party ... donors and developers to the premier’s daughter’s wedding."
One developer who purchased tickets to the stag and doe bought them from Tony Miele, chair of the PC Party’s fundraising arm, who told Wake he sold about 20 tickets — but not in a way that was connected to his Ontario PC Fund duties.
In one Toronto Police officer’s email that The Trillium reported on in November, a constable said “approximately 750 guests” were invited to the fundraiser at the premier’s home on Aug. 11, 2022.
Ford’s daughter, whose wedding was held several weeks after the stag and doe, got married to a police officer. Handfuls of police who work in the Greater Toronto Area attended their wedding as guests, as well.
At the first news conference where Ford was questioned on air about the stag and doe, he said “there was endless amounts of police officers” at the stag and doe.
“Is there a conflict that we give billions of dollars to police agencies and services around the province? No.” Ford added on Feb. 10, 2022.
On Dec. 14, the Toronto police decided not to disclose The Trillium records that were found in response to another related FOI. The police service cited seven subsections of the Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act that are meant to protect against disclosing information that could interfere with law enforcement or violate someone’s privacy.
The Toronto police’s decision letter indicated that records found under this FOI request included either operational information about officers on Ford’s street around the time of the stag and doe, or other emails and texts that its staff in Etobicoke sent around then that mentioned Ford’s street.
Stephanie Sayer, a Toronto police spokesperson, reaffirmed afterwards that “Toronto Police did not assign any on-duty resources to the Premier’s residence on Aug. 11, 2022.”
“Any other questions about the Premier’s security detail, including number of officers working and in what capacity, will need to be addressed by the OPP. We don’t have anything further to add on this,” Sayer added.