The Ford government passed Bill 97 at Queen’s Park on April 23, cutting off public access to records from the premier and cabinet.
The vote was along party lines. Progressive Conservative MPPs used their majority to pass the bill without public hearings. The NDP, Liberals and Greens voted against it. The bill is expected to receive Royal Assent and become law shortly.
The new law also applies to parliamentary assistants and political staff. It applies retroactively, which means it cancels freedom-of-information requests already in the system.
One of those requests is from Global News. It asked for call logs from Premier Doug Ford’s personal cellphone for a period in November 2022, the days before his government announced changes to the Greenbelt. Ford uses the personal phone for government business, which government lawyers have admitted in court filings.
Ford has said in public that part of the reason for the law is to kill the Global News request.
The bill will also end other active FOI cases, including one involving emails from former Ford chief of staff Ryan Amato related to the Greenbelt scandal.
It also doubles the time the government has to respond to FOI requests. The limit moves from 30 calendar days to 45 business days, about 63 days in total.
The bill is officially called the Plan to Protect Ontario Act, 2026. It changes 17 laws. The FOI changes are the most contested.
Minister Stephen Crawford, who introduced the FOI changes, defended the bill on Thursday by saying it aligns Ontario with other provinces.
“It’s about aligning with jurisdictions across the country,” Crawford said. “Every other province, almost, in the country, has laws similar to this.”
That is not what the province’s independent privacy watchdog says. Patricia Kosseim, Ontario’s Information and Privacy Commissioner, has said Bill 97 places Ontario among the most restrictive provinces in the country for access to cabinet records.
“FIPPA, like other freedom of information laws across the country, already protects personal, confidential, and constituency records from disclosure,” Kosseim said in a March 13 statement. “This amendment is about hiding government-related business to evade public accountability.”
Kosseim is an independent officer of the provincial legislature. Her office oversees the FOI system.
Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy was asked after the vote whether the public has a right to know what the government is doing. He did not answer. When asked whether his budget consultations included requests for changes to FOI laws, he refused to say. Earlier in the week, government staff ended a Crawford news conference after four minutes, when he was being pressed on the same changes.
NDP Leader Marit Stiles called the process an attack on democracy.
“Doug Ford is sending a clear message. If you don’t agree with him, he doesn’t want to hear from you,” Stiles said in an April 17 statement.
Interim Liberal Leader John Fraser said the bill was hypocritical. Fraser pointed to the Ford government’s demands for more accountability from school boards.
“This government isn’t accountable,” Fraser said on April 17. “Accountability is being out in the open, debating things, having differences of opinion, making sure the public knows what you’re doing.”
Green Leader Mike Schreiner said the bill shows Ford has something to hide.
“Doug Ford is changing the rules to make it easier to hide the truth,” Schreiner said on April 17.
A panel of Divisional Court judges ruled on Jan. 5 that the government must release Ford’s cellphone records to Global News. It was the government’s second loss on the request. The Information and Privacy Commissioner had ordered the release first, and the government lost its judicial review.
The province said it would appeal. Bill 97 ends that fight by making the records secret after the fact.
A government that loses in court, ignores its own privacy watchdog, dodges reporters and then rewrites the law to undo the ruling is not protecting cabinet confidentiality.
It is protecting itself.
