Toronto police awarded for blocking access needed to hold 'taxpayer-funded agencies accountable' (2023)

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The Toronto Police Service has been recognized with a national award for its repeated efforts to “block journalists from accessing information needed to hold taxpayer-funded agencies accountable.”

The force was selected as the 2022 recipient of the Code of Silence Award for Outstanding Achievement in Government Secrecy, from the Canadian Association of Journalists (CAJ), Centre for Free Expression at Toronto Metropolitan University, and Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE).

“Over the past year, the TPS has repeatedly engaged reporters in many contemptible ‘cat and mouse’-style games that are unbefitting of a modern government agency striving for transparency,” said Brent Jolly, president of the CAJ. “When brought together, the repeated efforts by the TPS to obfuscate and impede the free flow of information is an indictment on their commitment to the public’s right to know.”

Last year, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) took home the award.

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In announcing the award, CAJ highlighted one particular TPS response to a request under the Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.

TPS reportedly took two years to respond to a journalist’s request for wait time data for 9-1-1 emergency calls from 2017-18 in a machine-readable electronic format. When it did respond, itsent the journalist a 1,508-page, non-searchable document.

TPS was later ordered to comply with the original request and provide the data electronically after the journalist appealed to the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario.

Jolly said these types of tactics are common when journalists report on police forces across Canada.

“At best, it points to public agencies needing to up their record-keeping game rather than playing ‘hard to get’ with journalists. At worst, it raises the fundamental question: what is there to hide?” he added.

The awards are intended to bring public attention to government or publicly-funded agencies that “work hard to hide information to which the public has a right to under access to information legislation.”

For last year’s award, the RCMP was recognized with “an unprecedented double-citation” in the law enforcement category. The force was recognized both for its “outstandingly poor performance” in adhering to Canada’s federal Access to Information Act rules as well as its efforts in impeding and obstructing reporting on public opposition to logging an old-growth forest on Vancouver Island.

The RCMP also won the award in 2017, with the CAJ noting that year that the force failed to respond to a single request for information filed under the Access to Information Act (ATIA).

The ATIA gives Canadian citizens, permanent residents and individuals and corporations located in Canada the right to have access to information in federal government records that are not of a personal nature. There are roughly 260 government institutions currently subject to the ATIA.

Other Code of Silence award winners last year included Stratford City Council (municipal), the provincial government of British Columbia (provincial), and Indigenous Services Canada (federal).

CAJ says a 2022 Code of Silence Award in the federal category is set to be awarded on May 30.