Ford Moves to Exempt Premier and Cabinet From FOI Requests

I keep hearing the word “modernization” thrown around Queen’s Park like it means something good, it doesn’t. On March 13, 2026, Minister Stephen Crawford got up and announced the Ford government would introduce legislation to exempt the premier’s office, cabinet ministers, and parliamentary assistants from Ontario’s freedom of information rules. Retroactively. Every active request, voided. The bill is set for tabling when the legislature comes back on March 23.

Nobody outside PC caucus was buying it.

What the Bill Would Actually Do

So here’s what we’re looking at. The proposed legislation would pull the offices of the premier, cabinet ministers, and parliamentary assistants completely out of FIPPA’s reach. Documents produced in or held by those offices? No longer accessible through FOI. Gone.

The retroactive piece is what got my attention. Existing unfulfilled requests would be voided, documents already identified for release could be withheld permanently. I want to be specific about what that means in practice. If you’ve spent months, maybe years, pursuing records through the FOI process, if courts have actually adjudicated your case, this law would nullify all of it. The current law says you’re entitled to those documents, the new law would say you never were.

How many active requests would be affected? The government won’t say. The IPC handles thousands of appeals every year and a significant share involve ministerial records, so my read is we’re talking about a lot.

And the bill would extend the default FOI response deadline from 30 days to 45 business days. The government called this “more flexibility.” I’d call it more time to stall.

38 Years of Public Access

Ontario’s FIPPA came into force January 1, 1988, under David Peterson’s Liberal government. 38 years. Roughly 30,000 to 35,000 FOI requests each year. Most of those are individuals looking for their own records (immigration files, health records, employment histories) but several thousand annually go after government policy documents, correspondence, decision-making records. These requests have been the basis for some of the most important political reporting this province has ever produced.

FOI requests revealed the full scope of Darlington nuclear cost overruns in 2018. In 2023, FOI-obtained documents fed the Auditor General’s Greenbelt investigation, they exposed internal communications about which parcels were selected for removal. Journalists have used FOI to pry loose mandate letters, policy briefing notes, lobbyist correspondence. The system is slow. The exemptions are broad. The fees can be prohibitive.

It still works. That’s the thing.

The Phone Records Problem

Here’s where the timing gets interesting. The Ford government has been fighting over the premier’s cellphone logs for a while now. In January 2026 a divisional court ruled that Ford must release logs of government-related calls made on his personal phone, following an FOI request filed by Global News and backed by the IPC.

The case came down to whether the premier using a personal device for government business brought those records within FIPPA’s scope. Court said yes, the content of communication matters more than the device it happens on. That’s a principle with real implications for any government official who uses personal phones or messaging apps for official work. If this proposed legislation passes with retroactive effect it could wipe out that court ruling entirely. No appeal needed. The law itself would make the question moot.

What Other Provinces Actually Do

The Ford government argues that exempting ministerial offices brings Ontario in line with most other provinces. I looked into this, it’s misleading.

BC, Alberta, Quebec, and the federal government all cover ministerial offices under their FOI laws, though each provides broad exemptions for cabinet deliberations and policy advice. Nova Scotia is the closest parallel to Ontario’s current system. Both provinces explicitly include the premier’s and ministers’ offices within FOI scope. The Ford government’s proposal wouldn’t bring Ontario into the mainstream, it would push Ontario to the most restrictive end of the spectrum. And here’s why the comparison is dishonest: provinces which never covered those offices in the first place didn’t actively remove coverage. Ontario would be the first to take it away after having it for decades.

I don’t think that’s a detail you can hand-wave past.

The Backlash

Ontario’s Information and Privacy Commissioner Patricia Kosseim put out a pointed public statement. “Freedom of information laws exist to provide Ontarians with vital information about how government decisions are made,” she said. “If records about government business can be shielded from scrutiny simply because they sit in a minister’s office, public accountability is eviscerated.”

Fair enough, but NDP Leader Marit Stiles was blunter: “No government changes the FOI rules unless they are trying to hide corruption.”

Here’s the part the government hopes you won’t notice. The current act already exempts cabinet confidences from disclosure. Ministers can already refuse to release sensitive deliberations. This bill goes past refusal and into erasure, it would prevent even the acknowledgment that certain records exist.

Carleton University law professor Vincent Kazmierski, who specializes in access to information, put it plainly: “The question is not whether cabinet deliberations should be secret. The question is whether the public should be able to know what information the premier’s office has, even if specific documents are withheld. This bill eliminates even that basic transparency.”

The Canadian Association of Journalists called the legislation “a direct attack on the public’s right to know.” The Toronto Star and Hamilton Spectator published editorials condemning it.

None of that will matter if the votes are there. And the votes are there.

Add It Up

Both Ontario and Nova Scotia currently allow FOI requests that reach into ministers’ and the premier’s offices. The Ford government says this makes Ontario an outlier. But the existing system already has multiple exemptions for cabinet deliberations, legal privilege, matters of provincial security. This bill doesn’t close a gap. It builds a wall around the offices where the province’s biggest decisions get made.

Retroactive nullification, longer response timelines, blanket exemptions for political offices. That’s the most significant rollback of public access to government records in Ontario since FIPPA was enacted in 1988. The offices where lobbyists concentrate their efforts, where political considerations shape billion-dollar decisions, they’d operate entirely outside the public’s right to know.

The legislation will face opposition when the legislature reconvenes. It will almost certainly pass anyway. In the 43rd and 44th Parliaments combined PC MPPs have broken with their own government on less than a handful of occasions. The whip system plus the premier’s control over committee assignments and cabinet appointments keeps caucus locked down. Ford has weathered worse than editorial boards and opposition speeches.

I’d love to tell you the outrage will stop this. It won’t.

Sources and verification: The FOI exemption announcement was made March 13, 2026, and reported by CBC News, Global News, CP24, the Globe and Mail, and Canada’s National Observer. Privacy Commissioner Patricia Kosseim’s statement is from her published response. The January 2026 divisional court ruling on Ford’s phone records was reported by Global News. Marit Stiles’s quoted remarks are from press statements and media interviews. The current FOI provisions regarding cabinet confidences are established in the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, R.S.O. 1990. The retroactive application and March 23 tabling date are from the government’s own announcement. FIPPA’s enactment date (January 1, 1988) is from the Ontario Legislative Assembly records. Annual FOI request volumes (approximately 30,000-35,000) are from the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario’s annual reports. The Darlington FOI disclosures and Greenbelt FOI documents are from media reporting by the Toronto Star, CBC News, and the Auditor General’s 2023 report. Provincial comparisons draw on FIPPA (Ontario), FOIPPA (BC), FOIP (Alberta), and their federal equivalents. The Canadian Association of Journalists’ statement is from their published press release. Vincent Kazmierski’s comments are from media interviews reported by the Ottawa Citizen and CBC News.

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