MAYOR’S FOI – Information and Privacy Commissioner cancels inquiry
(Image: Mel Rothenburger)
An inquiry into an allegation that Mayor Reid Hamer-Jackson failed to properly respond to a Freedom of Information application has been terminated.
The mayor said today (March 20, 2026) he has received confirmation from the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner that the inquiry has been cancelled in view of iNFOnews.ca’s withdrawal of its application and complaint, and the file has been closed.
Coun. Margot Middleton, acting as spokesman for the rest of council, submitted a motion at last week’s City council meeting demanding that Hamer-Jackson provide the requested records to the applicant within 24 hours or face new sanctions.
InFONews.ca acknowledged after the council meeting that it was the applicant and was withdrawing its complaint.
Hamer-Jackson has maintained he attempted to e-mail the records to Middleton on several occasions. Middleton acknowledge in the days following approval of her motion that she had received some texted messages from him in response to her motion and turned them over to the City’s lawyers but that they weren’t the correct records.
Councillors had been scheduled to discuss the aftermath of Middleton’s motion next week.
ArmchairMayor.ca 
Now that the applicant has withdrawn their complaint, Coun. Middleton’s motion is moot? We can all move on from this embarrassing distraction?
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Exactly what records did the mayor send Info News and were they or weren’t they vetted prior to him sending them?
Marshall Jones, editor at Info News, stated that the mayor sent records “reveal private personal information about his political enemies, most of which were outside the requested date range. He shared with our reporter a lengthy text message from a former top city bureaucrat detailing their ongoing health issues”, shouldn’t this type of information have been vetted by a third party prior to being sent?
Somehow I don’t think we’ve heard the last of this, certainly not from Info News and likely not from this vindictive, undisciplined and undeserving council. But also, maybe from the subjects of these private messages or their lawyers? We might even hear from the province who have thus far been hands off.
I get the feeling this story has legs and that they’ll be a few more similar stories unnecessarily costing the city hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars more before the coming election.
No Incumbents 2026
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