Toronto City Council is set to consider a landmark transparency motion at its April meeting, which if approved, would open councillors’ records to the public for the first time.

The Open Ontario motion, which was prompted by a series of stories in the Star , calls on the province to change its freedom of information legislation so that “the records of city councillors” are subject to access requests.

And while that type of legislative change could take years to implement, the motion also asks the city clerk to “immediately” establish an online portal where councillors can voluntarily post their daily schedules.

“People should be able to know what I’m doing with my time while I’m on the city dime,” said the proposal’s champion, Toronto-Danforth councillor Paula Fletcher.

Fletcher said it’s important that the public and media have the right to investigate what city councillors are doing and who they are meeting with.

“If we’d had this (freedom of information) ability during the (attempted) takeover of the waterfront in 2011 , that attempt might not have made it as far as it did,” she said, referring to the debacle a year and a half ago when Councillor Doug Ford attempted to hijack development plans for the eastern Port Lands.

Frustrated with the slow pace of development, the mayor’s brother met with at least one foreign developer to discuss a new plan for the eastern waterfront. The proposal, which would have undone a decade’s worth of planning, made it all the way to city council, where it was eventually stopped.

Councillor Sarah Doucette, who is seconding the motion, said she only learned that she wasn’t subject to the Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (MFIPPA) through the Star stories.

Under current legislation, city councillors are not considered city employees, so, unlike the mayor, none of their records need face public scrutiny.

“I was very surprised to learn this,” said Doucette, who represents Ward 13, Parkdale-High Park. “We’re politicians. We’re public people. We’re paid by residents of Toronto, and they should know what we’re doing. We’re working for them.”

If the duo’s motion is approved, the city clerk would establish a framework for which councillor’s records would be covered. In the past, there have been concerns that extending access laws to councillors would compromise constituent privacy and councillors’ personal information. Fletcher said the logistics need to be worked out, but it’s manageable.

The motion also asks Ontario MPPs to place themselves under access legislation, to which they also aren’t currently subject.

Typically, elected officials in Canada are not subject to freedom of information laws, with the exception some provincial ministers and mayors. This is not the case in countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia.

That could be changing. At least in Ontario.

Last week, prompted by the series of Star stories, information and privacy commissioner Ann Cavoukian sent a letter to the ministers of government services and municipal affairs and housing, requesting changes to the act.

“Given that MFIPPA is more than 20 years old, I recommend that a review be undertaken to see whether the scope of the records captured by the Act is still appropriate,” the letter read.

John Friesen, director of communications for Government Services Minister Harinder Takhar, said both Takhar and Municipal Affairs Minister Linda Jeffrey plan to meet Cavoukian soon.

No date has been set.

Both the Information and Privacy Act and the Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act fall under the Ministry of Government Services.

Friesen said the ministers will need to determine “what can and what can’t be done.”

The last major update to Ontario transparency laws came in 2003, when hospitals and universities were added.

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Cavoukian’s federal counterpart, Information Commissioner of Canada Suzanne Legault, is currently midway through a sweeping review of the country’s access laws.

Last week, Legault told the Star she expects her final report, due this fall, to include a recommendation that all members of Parliament be covered.