A Progressive Conservative MPP charges Premier Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals are trying to silence him for releasing confidential documents revealing Ontario’s finances are in a shambles.

Vic Fedeli told reporters Thursday at Queen’s Park that the Grits “must be hiding something big” since they are coming after him for publicizing internal government paperwork.

On Monday, the Nipissing MPP disclosed that the Liberals’ deficit reduction targets could not be met without raising taxes to make up for a revenue shortfall.

He then crowed about information contained in “newly discovered, confidential documents” in the legislature on Tuesday.

But in doing so, Government House Leader John Milloy said Fedeli is in breach of an agreement by all three parties not to disclose the documents — and he’s urged Speaker Dave Levac to censure him.

That’s because the legislative committee probing the Liberals’ gas-plants-relocation debacle was given hundreds of thousands of pages of internal documents, some of which contain commercially sensitive information.





All three political parties agreed not to publicly disclose such papers because it could undermine the government’s negotiating position.

“This disclosure . . . was a flagrant and intentional breach of a . . . motion of the standing committee on estimates which required that certain commercially sensitive and privileged documents be kept confidential,” Milloy told the house.

“The release of confidential committee documents to the public without authorization from the committee, I believe, represents a serious breach and must attract strong sanction to defer future breaches.”

Fedeli said the Liberals are being heavy-handed about publicly available documents because he exposed a $4.5-billion budget hole.

“They’re in the redacted file — they just forgot to black out parts of things on some of the versions of it. That’s their fault not mine,” he said.

“How can we not publish that? That’s a public document.”

PC House Leader Jim Wilson said that the Liberals “messed up” by allowing a confidential document to be inadvertently released.

“It shows your government can’t even do a cover-up properly,” said Wilson.

NDP House Leader Gilles Bisson noted the Liberals often claim documents are “commercially sensitive” when they are more likely “politically embarrassing.”

Ironically, Milloy is leading Wynne’s “open government” initiative to make things at Queen’s Park more transparent.

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Despite that, he implored Levac to “find a prima facie breach of privilege in this case,” which could lead to unspecified punishment of Fedeli.

The speaker said he would “reserve” his ruling on the issue and return with a decision in the days ahead.

Still, the kerfuffle led to a raucous day in the legislature — so much so that the Tories refused to grant unanimous consent to a Liberal bill that would freeze MPPs’ salaries at $116,550 for another five years, a political no-brainer with an election looming.

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