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.
The amount of laywer-hours isn’t unusual if the province keeps appealing, as it’s probably split between several lawyers, and spread out over 3 years.
What’s unusual is the need to keep them secret in the first place.