Ontario will need 33,200 more nurses and 50,853 more personal support workers by 2032, the government projects — figures it tried to keep secret but were obtained by The Canadian Press.

The government recently won a fight in front of the Information and Privacy Commissioner to keep those figures under wraps after denying access to them to Global News following a freedom-of-information request from the outlet.

But the same FOI office made the information available to The Canadian Press through a separate request, a situation critics say exposes the frailties and arbitrariness of the access-to-information system.

The projections of nurses and PSWs the province will need — above and beyond those currently being educated through the system — are not surprising to the unions representing workers in the health-care system, who have been sounding the alarm for years about shortages.

But it is telling that the government tried to keep the public from seeing those numbers, said Sharleen Stewart, the president of SEIU Healthcare, the largest union representing long-term care workers.