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NATURE OF THE APPEAL: This is an appeal from a decision of the Regional Municipality of Peel ("the Region" or "Peel"), under the Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (the Act ). As background, the Region and the Town of Caledon ("the Town" or "Caledon") have been jointly engaged in a resource study surrounding an amendment to the Town's Official Plan. The amendment is to be the subject of a hearing before the Ontario Municipal Board (the OMB), originally scheduled to commence in September of 2001, but now postponed until 2002. The requester (now the appellant) made a request for copies of all records (including notes, letters, memoranda, reports, council minutes and resolutions, studies, etc.) with respect to: the Caledon Community Resources Study; the development, consideration and approval of Caledon Official Plan amendment 161; and the aggregate policies of Caledon's Official Plan. The appellant is a lawyer who acts as counsel to the Association of Aggregate Producers of Ontario (the APAO) in the OMB proceeding. The Region responded to the request initially with a letter dated November 3, 2000 which states in part: Further to your telephone conversation of November 3, 2000 with [named individual], please be advised that access will be granted to the records responsive to your request. As you know, the quantity of records responsive to your request is rather large. I have therefore scheduled Wednesday November 15, 2000 (1:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m.) for the review process, for you to determine which records require photocopying. Please understand that prior to the review, all exempted information under [the Act ] will be severed. Following the appellant's review, on November 15, 2000, the Region identified, in several successive letters, the records it would permit access to as well as the exemptions it relied on to deny access to others. Some of the records to which it denied access after November 15 were ones the appellant had reviewed. Further, some of the records the Region agreed to disclose even after November 15 became the subject of later exemption claims by the Region. The Region also transferred, in several stages, a number of the records to the Town for its decision, citing the provisions of section 18(3) of the Act . A number of issues are raised by this appeal. There are the exemptions the Region has relied on to deny access to a number of the records, in particular, the discretionary exemptions in section 6(1)(a) of the Act (draft by-law), section 7(1) (advice or recommendations), section 11(e) (information to be used in negotiations), and section 12 (solicitor-client privilege). Further, the appellant takes issue with the transfer of part of the request, pertaining to specific identified records, from the Region to the Town. As well, the appellant objected to the Region's changes in position over the course of making its decision on access, and takes the position that the Region is not entitled to deny access to records it has earlier decided to disclose. In this respect, the appellant takes the position that the Region cannot deny access to the records it permitted him to view on November 15. This raises an issue of whether there has been a waiver of the solicitor-client privilege or other exemptions by the Region and in general, of the effect of the November 15 review on the applicability of the exemptions relied on by the Region. Finally, the appellant relies on the provisions of section 16 of the Act (public interest override). It should be noted that on the same date as the request to the Region, the appellant made an identical request to the Town. That request has become the subject of another appeal to this office, MA010064-1, which is also currently in adjudication before me. During the course of dealing with this appeal, I denied a request from the Region and the Town to consolidate the adjudication of the two appeals (MA000374-1 and MA010064-1). I decided, however, to give formal notice of this appeal to the Town and provide it with the opportunity, as an affected party, to make representations on the facts and issues raised by the appeal. I sent a Notice of Inquiry to the Region and the Town, initially, asking for their representations on the matters raised by the appeal. I then sent the Notice of Inquiry to the appellant, along with the representations of the other parties (edited for confidentiality) and invited his submissions, which I also received. CONCLUSION: I order disclosure of the records in Index "A", with the exception of records whose transfers to the Town I uphold. I uphold the Region's decision to withhold access to the records in Index "B" with the exception of Record 26(a) and further, uphold the transfers of certain records in Index "B" to the Town. RECORDS: Attached as Appendix "A" to this order is the list o
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