OSHAWA -- Transport Canada has responded to a formal request from Mayor John Gray to cough up the elusive Crombie Report -- and the correspondence contains both good news and bad.

An Aug. 21 letter from Transport Canada's access to information and privacy division says the report won't be released to the mayor's office at this time, citing section 26 of the Access to Information Act.

On the bright side, section 26 says the head of a government institution can refuse to release records if they "believe on reasonable grounds" that the information will be published within 90 days of the date the request was made -- which indicates the report is forthcoming.

"My preference would have been to have the report in my hands now," Mayor Gray said. "But I can live with this, because before we had no timeline at all. Now we can know the report will be published on the Transport Canada website by Oct. 18."

The mayor said it is his understanding that the report must be published by that date or before, even though the wording of the act only mentions "reasonable grounds" for belief that this will happen.

The mayor filed an access to information request with Transport Canada last month in the hope of extracting a copy of the Crombie Report from Transport Minister Lawrence Cannon.

It was the first time he has filed such a request and said he made the unorthodox move because he had no confidence the report would be forthcoming, otherwise.

The Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act ensures the public can access information controlled by institutions -- like municipalities and higher level governments -- while at the same time shielding information that must legally be kept private.

The act says any exemptions should be limited and specific, and that decisions on what will be disclosed should be reviewed independently of the institution that controls the information.

Former Toronto mayor David Crombie was appointed in 2007 by the federal government to mediate a bitter, decades-long dispute over what should be done with Oshawa's waterfront lands.

There are many competing groups pushing for their vision to prevail and Mr. Crombie spent months interviewing politicians, harbour users, local industry and other stakeholders before writing his recommendations in February and submitting them to Minister Cannon.

Since that time, stakeholders on all sides of the issue have been jostling for a peek at the document, while local MPs insist over and over again that it is only weeks away from being released.