OPP's disclosure questioned

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Ontario's assistant Information and Privacy Commissioner has ordered an Ontario Provincial Police superintendent and every OPP official who had anything to do with the production and storage of videotapes and photographs taken during the 1995 occupation of Ipperwash Provincial Park to appear before him in person to be questioned.

Tom Mitchinson issued the order after receiving the OPP response to a previous order. He remains unsatisfied that all original, unedited evidence has been disclosed by the police service and the Ontario ministry of the solicitor general (now the ministry of community safety and correctional services).

"I have decided that in order to obtain the necessary information . . . I will need to summon the appropriate OPP officials . . . and require them to attend before me and give sworn evidence relating to the various issues that remain outstanding," Mitchinson wrote on Feb. 5. "I will issue my summons for superintendent [Susan] Dunn today. Because I do not know the identity of the other OPP officials, I will include a provision in this interim order requiring the ministry to provide me with the information that I will need to summon them as well."

The hearing was tentatively scheduled for March 2 (after Windspeaker's production deadline). It was to be held at Mitchinson's Toronto office. As is the commission's regular practice, the hearing would be closed to all but those directly involved in the appeal.

Those directly involved in the appeal include Lynette Fortune, a freedom of information specialist with CBC-TV's fifth estate, CBC News lawyers, the ministry, the OPP and the information and privacy commissioner.

Mitchinson ordered sworn statements from the OPP stating that all evidence that was requested under an access to information request by the CBC had been produced. The hearing was called because each time that Mitchinson has ordered an affidavit from the OPP, Fortune and the CBC lawyers have gone over the superintendent's statements and found problems. To date, Mitchinson has agreed with almost all of the media's complaints about the OPP's compliance.

"At this point, I was not satisfied that I had been provided with full access to all of the various responsive records identified by the ministry," he wrote in his Feb. 5 order.