running

As more information surfaced via Freedom of Information requests and serious issues continued to surface, the municipality, in my opinion, KNEW it was in trouble... and that is when things got VERY ugly! The simple fact is, the now former City Clerk, via the Freedom of Information Process had released to me a whole lot of very damaging information... long before the City Solicitor even had a clue as to what I was documenting! I literally have binders of information now... and hundreds of emails... and it just got uglier and uglier and uglier. There is some information that is so upsetting to me that I can not even bring myself to read it (i.e., what were in my opinion blatant lies given to the Information and Privacy Commission when the municipality attempted to shield itself from liability by refusing to have more documentation released via Freedom of Information (FOI) and Information and Privacy Commission (IPC) Appeals).

It was not surprising to me to see the IPC vote in favor of the municipality in stopping the release of further information saying that my requests were "frivolous and vexatious" (no other category could be used by the municipality such as "solicitor-client", etc. since no other category COULD be used... so... the municipality used "frivolous and vexatious" - a reason for refusal to release the information that my first mediator had told me "was not going to fly" - even though... in the end... it would as the IPC ruled in favor of the municipality in not allowing the release of more documents and limiting me to ONE Freedom of Information Request PER YEAR! I considered this an absolute abuse of my most basic rights in a democratic society where one has the right and DUTY to question the actions of one's government - especially when not in the public interest!

It is important for the public to know that pretty well all tribunals in Ontario are overseen by the Attorney General of Ontario - the very man who, in my opinion, may himself be at the very center of this particular building scandal given he was the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing when the Professional Engineers of Ontario wrote their very eye opening warning letter in 2007 warning of serious problems in the truss industry! In addition, the City of Greater Sudbury appears to be self-insured... and the implications of that... are simply HUGE! But then, given "the players", it appeared a whole lot of municipalities across Canada and the US may now find themselves in the same boat! If the government can find hundreds of millions to build artificial lakes in Canada (a country of lakes) for G7 meetings, it can find the funds to fix these problems and put a whole lot of people back to work at the same time!