Canada: Ontario Mayors' Private WhatsApp Chat Revealed After Ruling
The Facts
- A 101-page WhatsApp transcript involving mayors of Ontario's largest cities was published Thursday by the Toronto Star, after a provincial freedom-of-information adjudicator ruled the newspaper could view and publish the records.
- Information and Privacy Commissioner adjudicator Chris Anzenberger dismissed an appeal by Ontario Big City Mayors in late August, finding no expectation of confidentiality and agreeing a WhatsApp group is "functionally identical to an email chain."
- Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow disclosed the chat's existence in December 2024, telling reporters mayors shared encampment concerns there. The Star then filed a request under freedom-of-information law, receiving the records 22 months and 25 days later.
Sources Split
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The Spin
Right narrative
Behind closed doors, the people running Ontario's biggest cities admitted what Ottawa kept denying: immigration levels blew past what housing, shelters and social services could absorb. Mayors across the political spectrum, including a former NDP leader, conceded newcomers had nowhere to live. Honesty in private and silence in public is how a housing crisis got this bad.
Left narrative
Nothing in those 101 pages justified two years of legal stonewalling backed by a Bay Street firm and funded by taxpayers. Public officials talking shop in their official capacity are creating public records, and swapping email for WhatsApp changes nothing about that. Treating secrecy as a governing principle does far more damage to public trust than any candid message ever could.