Central to privatizing public services using the Public-Private Partnerships (P3) model is the notion of secrecy.  This model wishes to operate as a private corporate entity which releases to the public only the information that it is legally required to share. There is no commitment to the ideas of transparency and accountability to the public even though public funds and assets are very much part of this process.

This has been seen in both Britain and Ontario.  It has been challenged in both jurisdictions.  The most recent example in Ontario is the ongoing court case by labour and community groups to have the true costs of the Public-Private Partnership (P3) applied at the William Osler Centre in Brampton released to the public.

There is an earlier example which illustrates the commitment of the Ontario government (both Conservative and Liberal) to secrecy and not to transparency.

In 2003, the Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL) was involved in the issue of home care, in particular the deliberate policy of the Conservative government to destroy the existing system and replace it with a for-profit model.  The OFL made the decision to seek all relevant information from one local Community Care Access Centre (CCAC) on how this particular policy was being implemented.  If successful, the same kind of information would be collected from all CCACs across Ontario to give a province-wide perspective on the impact of this policy.

On May 26, 2003, the OFL, using the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, requested both the Kingston, Frontenac, Lennox and Addington Community Care Access Centre and the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care to provide copies of:

a) service directions issued to the CCAC by the Ministry;

b) any provincial templates for production or requests for proposal (RFP) documents by the CCAC;

c) any provincial templates for production or requests for qualification documents by the CCAC;

d) any service agreements between the CCAC and the Government of Ontario;

e) any requests for qualification issued by the CCAC and the responses received from any home care service providers to those requests for qualification;

f) any requests for proposals issued by the CCAC and the responses received by the CCAC from any home care service providers to those requests for
proposal.