TORONTO, July 2, 2026 /CNW/ - An Ontario school board that refused to release information on its small art collection because of supposed safety concerns has been selected as the municipal winner of the 2025 Code of Silence Award for Outstanding Achievement in Government Secrecy.

The Thames Valley District School Board is one of many public bodies that possess large amounts of fine art, and CBC reporter Colin Butler filed a freedom-of-information request to learn more about what it owned. One would think it would be a relatively simple request, but the school board refused to disclose them citing legal exemptions for records whose disclosure could "reasonably be expected to seriously threaten the safety or health of an individual."

The story was a matter of public interest: one school board in Ontario has a $10 million art collection, and the Thames Valley District School Board was one of five boards where poor financial management had led to provincial supervision.

It took a second request for CBC just to learn the total appraised value of all the school board's art. And though the safety exception is intended to "protect individuals from serious threats to their safety or health resulting from the disclosure of a record," those figures made clear that the school board's art collection was hardly full of Mona Lisas that could inspire a high-risk heist. The appraised value of the school board's paintings averages out to about $360 per painting.

"It is shocking that the Thames Valley District School Board declined to provide information to the public about its modest art collection — likely consisting of items donated by the public and maintained at public expense," said James L. Turk, director of the Centre for Free Expression.

"This is an extreme version of the secrecy mentality that grips too many public institutions that seem not to understand their obligations to the public in a democratic society."

The Code of Silence Awards are presented annually by the CAJ, the Centre for Free Expression at Toronto Metropolitan University (CFE) and Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE). The awards spotlight government or publicly funded agencies that work hard to hide information that the public is entitled to access through freedom of information legislation.

Last year's municipal winner was Vancouver Coastal Health, which was awarded for its routine breaking of access-to-information laws during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Nominations for the 2026 Code of Silence Awards will open in September 2026.

SOURCE Canadian Association of Journalists