{"id":1139,"date":"2014-05-26T16:57:38","date_gmt":"2014-05-26T16:57:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thor.ca\/\/blog\/?p=1139"},"modified":"2014-05-26T16:57:38","modified_gmt":"2014-05-26T16:57:38","slug":"supreme-court-of-canada-considers-meaning-of-advice-in-disclosure-exemption","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thor.ca\/blog\/2014\/05\/supreme-court-of-canada-considers-meaning-of-advice-in-disclosure-exemption\/","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court of Canada considers meaning of \u201cadvice\u201d in disclosure exemption"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In <a href=\"http:\/\/thor.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/2014-SCC-36.pdf\"><em>John Doe v. Ontario (Finance)<\/em><\/a>, 2014 SCC 36, a tax lawyer sought disclosure of certain \u201cpolicy options\u201d prepared by the Ontario government before it enacted partially retroactive tax legislation.\u00a0 The Ontario Ministry denied the lawyer\u2019s request pursuant to an exemption in the applicable legislation for \u201c\u2026a record where the disclosure would reveal advice or recommendations of a public servant\u201d.\u00a0 The Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) held that the exemption applied such that the policy options were protected from disclosure.\u00a0 \u201cAdvice\u201d has a broader meaning than \u201crecommendations\u201d; otherwise the word \u201cadvice\u201d would be redundant (paragraph 24).\u00a0 Furthermore, the Legislature\u2019s intention in protecting such advice \u2013 combustible material in the hands of journalists or political opponents \u2013 was to preserve an effective and neutral public service capable of producing full, free and frank advice to the elected officials (paragraph 43).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In <a href=\"http:\/\/thor.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/2014-SCC-36.pdf\"><em>John Doe v. Ontario (Finance)<\/em><\/a>, 2014 SCC 36, a tax lawyer sought disclosure of certain \u201cpolicy options\u201d prepared by the Ontario government before it enacted partially retroactive tax legislation.\u00a0 The Ontario Ministry denied the lawyer\u2019s request pursuant to&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corporate-tax"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thor.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thor.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thor.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thor.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thor.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thor.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1139\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thor.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thor.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thor.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}