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Ontario’s ministries are keeping information from the government’s own financial accountability officer that he needs to do his job, he said Tuesday morning.

Stephen LeClair has been in the job just over a year, doing a similar thing in Ontario as the parliamentary budget officer does federally: He double-checks the government’s budget figures and gives his own take on its projections and assumptions when new programs are being put together.

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He answers to the legislature, like the province’s ombudsman or its auditor-general. But he needs information from the executive — the premier and her ministers and the people who work for them.

“The difficulties I have faced in accessing the information my office needs to produce relevant and timely analyses are much greater than I expected they would be,” LeClair said. “Ministries have repeatedly refused to provide my office with information on grounds that are not founded in my enabling legislation.”