City of Owen Sound Delays Public Access to Vision 2050 Survey Responses Despite FOI Approval
Intended as a cornerstone of open engagement, Vision 2050 survey results remain under wraps as Owen Sound stretches its timeline for release well past MFIPPA requirements.

EDITORIAL OPINION
Despite their approval of a November 18, 2024, freedom of access request to release 5,000 community member survey responses to The Owen Sound Current—and the 30-day legislated timeline for complying with such requests—the City of Owen Sound says it will take until February 27, 2025, to deliver the results.
On November 18, 2024, we filed an access request under the Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (MFIPPA) for the full results of the Vision 2050 community survey. This data includes approximately 5,000 suggestions and comments from over 1,000 people who participated in Owen Sound’s Vision 2050 survey.
When the survey opened in June 2024, Mayor Ian Boddy said in a prepared statement that, “Everyone's lived experience is important.”
Just what those experiences are remains elusive though, since City staff decided in collaboration with their consultant—without a directive from Council—that its new “best practice” is to withhold publicly-funded survey results from the public record.
Council approved the request last year for $85,000 to engage a consultant to conduct ‘Vision 2050’ strategic planning after staff said they did not have the expertise or resources in-house to complete the job.
Residents were promised an opportunity to “Help shape the future of Owen Sound” by participating in the survey, which was widely promoted on the City’s web and social channels, via a paid advertising campaign, and with printed copies available throughout the city.
Why the City decided that community input about improving our city must remain a closely guarded secret remains unclear.
In response to our request for the survey data, the senior manager tasked with overseeing the survey told The Owen Sound Current on November 14, “Quite frankly, the expectation that the City would release the raw survey data so that a community member could do their own analysis, as they don’t trust the analysis done by a professional, is insulting to [the consultant’s] professional practice and to City staff.”
Yet as we wrote to the Mayor and City Council that same day, the issue isn’t the consultant’s credentials (nor ours as a publication, which staff attempted to diminish with the above misrepresentation of the request). In reality, 5,000 community member responses cannot be summarized in two pages.
Each individual’s response has merit and value.
Further, as an independent community publication, we feel strongly that those contributions from residents deserve to be a part of this City’s public record.
We believe the resident answers to these open-ended questions posed by the City in its Vision 2050 survey are inherently valuable. Over 1,000 people took the time to answer these questions:
Is there a priority (or priorities) that should be added to the list of Council Priorities?
What is one positive quality of Owen Sound that is not currently being celebrated or optimally leveraged? (e.g., generating revenue from engaging and diverse tourism events, striking landscapes, potential of local business, caring communities, etc.)
What is one characteristic of Owen Sound that is uncomfortable to speak about or is a significant opportunity for improvement? (e.g., poverty, race relations, homophobia, homelessness, young talent leaving, etc.)
What is one significant missed opportunity that, if embraced, would positively impact the city?
In one to three sentences, share your idea for a prosperous, connected, vibrant and safe Owen Sound.
Powerful and actionable strategic visions are rooted in local expertise. What expertise and talent exist in the community to move a strong strategic plan forward?
It’s difficult to imagine what personally identifying respondent information would have resulted from those questions. (They were followed by demographics questions, which we explicitly excluded from our freedom of information request.)
Why are the answers to the above questions not being treated by the City of Owen Sound as they were intended by community members—as constructive, helpful input that could help shape our shared future?
Isn’t that what we were supposed to be doing with the whole Vision 2050 concept?
It’s not like publishing the responses would be a new and crazy thing. The Harrison Park Master Plan survey results are public record. The results of the 2021 Citizen Satisfaction Survey, with a smaller sample size, were shared in full in an 84-pg report. In fact, the Vision 2050 consultant refers to data from both of those previous surveys in her report.
The results of the Vision 2050 survey should similarly inform research and community conversations, both public and private, for years to come. Isn’t that why we funded it?
When we wrote to City Council in November, we also reminded them that aside from the obvious value of this data, this is a matter of transparency and accountability.
Community members spent time participating in this process, and it's important to close the loop by showing they were heard. All of them.
There has long been a perception that the City of Owen Sound's public outreach is performative, and it's not worth putting in the effort to engage on the public's part as feedback disappears into a black hole or ends up on a shelf at City Hall.
None of your elected representatives responded, so we proceeded with the request for access.
MFIPPA’s regulations are clear; these requests are to be resolved within 30 days.
On December 13, we received an email and request for clarification from City staff stating that, “We now have the raw data, and I have attached the headers for your review.” (They wanted us to confirm which spreadsheet columns we had requested.)
On December 18, we received a fee estimate of $735 for City staff to complete the work of reviewing community member responses and applying redactions where necessary. (We asked and were assured that the only redactions that would be applied were sections of responses that would identify the respondent.)
We were also notified that the City of Owen Sound required an extension on that 30-day timeline to deliver the survey results. MFIPPA does allow for time extensions under certain circumstances.
At that time—before the Christmas holidays—City staff said they need an additional 55 days for:
Time to obtain the records;
Review of a large volume of records;
Consultation with a person or organization outside the institution; and
Office closure from December 24, 2024, to January 2, 2025.
The Owen Sound Current paid the required deposit just after the holidays, when business resumed in early January.
We asked the City of Owen Sound on January 14, 2025—two full months after filing our access request for the Vision 2050 survey results, and a month after the approval—when they would be delivered. We were informed the work will be completed by February 27, 2025.
Now, if anyone is counting, that’s 55 days from January 3. Why does the City still need this 55-day extension when:
They already have the records, as they confirmed on December 13.
The review requires an estimated 24 hours, as confirmed on December 18.
They already consulted with external parties prior to notifying us of the decision to release the records.
The 55 day extension we were notified of on December 18 included the holiday office closure, which no longer applied by January 3.
We wrote to the City’s administration one week ago, on January 19, and copied your Mayor and Council. We shared the above concerns and asked them to reconsider their timeline.
No one responded.
While the Mayor and City continue to gripe about how disagreeable the community is and how people just don’t appreciate all they do to improve public consultation and communication—this is our reality.
In the meantime, Council has allocated another $100,000 to Vision 2050 in 2025. What for? Well, we’re not quite sure. If this administration has its way, maybe we’ll never know.
This $85,000-going-on-$185,000 consulting engagement was an opportunity for Owen Sound’s leadership to rebuild trust and demonstrate accountability. They could have chosen to honour the spirit of community engagement promised through Vision 2050.
Where are your elected representatives who talked about democracy, transparency, and accountability at campaign time?
This input from over 1,000 residents is not just data—these are the voices of a community that deserves to be heard, not silenced. Transparency isn’t optional; it’s a cornerstone of democracy, and it’s time for the City to deliver.
This is an editorial opinion piece by the editor of The Owen Sound Current. It reflects the publication's perspective on the issue, not objective reporting, and is intended to foster discussion and debate.
The desire to keep the the Vision 2050 survey responses private doesn't inspire confidence.
Bravo! Delays and cost are intentional hurdles to public access to information. Why hadn't the consultant already "applied redactions as necessary" as part of its $85,000 compensation for conducting the survey?