Brad Blair, ex-OPP officer, files $15M lawsuit and calls for public inquiry

Brad Blair, former interim commissioner of the Ontario Provincial Police, has filed a $15-million lawsuit for wrongful termination against Premier Doug Ford and several top-level civil servants.

At a news conference Friday, Blair’s lawyer, Julian Falconer, said that the statement of claim for the lawsuit was filed Friday morning, calling it “the only way Brad Blair can push for accountability.”

Falconer and Blair also called for a public inquiry into provincial appointments made under Ford, calling them “questionable.”

“Nothing short of a commission of inquiry … will actually give a full airing to the issues,” said Falconer.

By mid-afternoon Friday, Ford’s government had released a statement, saying that since the matter was before the courts, it would be inappropriate to comment.

The dispute between the premier and Blair grew out of the government’s move last November to name Toronto Police Supt. Ron Taverner as the OPP’s new commissioner.

Blair, a 32-year veteran of the OPP, was in the running for the job. In December, Blair made a public appeal to Ontario’s ombudsman to investigate what he called “questions of political interference” in Taverner’s appointment. Taverner is a longtime friend of Ford and his family.

Blair was fired in early March, within days of Taverner withdrawing his name from contention for the top police job.

On Friday, Blair said his firing came as a shock, and resulted in him being cut off from the organization he spent more than three decades working with.

“We have been cut off from our OPP family,” he said.

Ontario’s integrity commissioner cleared Ford of allegations of political interference in Taverner’s appointment.

Blair accused of ‘unprovoked personal and political attack’

The wrongful dismissal suit isn’t Blair’s only legal action against the provincial government.

He is also pursuing a $5-million defamation suit against Ford over comments the premier made suggesting Blair had violated Ontario’s Police Services Act.

That came out of Blair’s decision to reveal documents that suggested Ford’s staff wanted the OPP, which provides the premier’s security, to spend more than $50,000 on a customized van.

In the defamation suit, Blair is suing Ford over statements he made in December and January suggesting that Blair broke the law by releasing confidential material obtained through his job as deputy commissioner of the OPP.

Ford denies that anything he said about Blair at the time was defamatory.

In their statement of defence, filed in April, lawyers for Ford say he made his comments about Blair to the media in response to “a calculated, widely publicized, public, malicious and unprovoked personal and political attack.” Ford’s lawyers say Blair “used and abused” his position in the OPP to go after the premier.

None of the allegations in the case by either side has been proven in court.