Ontario Premier Doug Ford speaks during Question Period in the Ontario Legislature in Toronto on Tuesday. Information and privacy commissioner Patricia Kosseim has sided with Global News in a battle for access to Ford’s call records.Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press
Ontario Premier Doug Ford said Tuesday he believes the information and privacy commissioner, who is speaking out about changes he is making to freedom-of-information laws, is “politically driven.”
The government announced this month that records of the premier, cabinet ministers, parliamentary assistants and their offices will no longer be subject to public disclosure.
Ford said the changes will bring Ontario in line with the practices in other provinces and the federal government, but it is also about protecting his cellphone records.
He contends that releasing those would reveal the personal and health information of residents who send him text messages, but that type of information is already protected.
As well, he said the government and provincial agencies receive 75,000 freedom-of-information requests per year.
“That’s more than all provinces in the entire country combined,” he said. “So there’s obviously an issue there. It’s costing thousands and thousands of hours that people should be reallocated, focusing on what people really care about.”
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Information and privacy commissioner Patricia Kosseim has sided with Global News in a battle for access to Ford’s call records, saying they should be public since the premier uses his personal phone for government business.
When Ford’s government announced the upcoming FOI restrictions earlier this month, Kosseim said retroactively changing the law sends a message that “if oversight bodies get in the way, just change the rules.”
“Freedom of information laws exist to provide Ontarians with vital information about how government decisions are made, on what basis, who influenced them and whether the public interest is being served,” Kosseim wrote in a statement.
“If records about government business can be shielded from scrutiny simply because they sit in a minister’s office, on a staffer’s device, or within a political account, public accountability is eviscerated.”
Ford said Tuesday that Kosseim, who did an interview this week with Global News, is trying to “politicize” the issue.
“I’ve never seen a privacy commissioner actually go out and do media,” he said. “It is very politically driven, in my opinion, and it’s unfortunate we have a privacy commissioner that wants to politicize this.”
Kosseim’s office said the commissioner is an independent officer of the legislature with a statutory mandate to comment on matters that affect Ontarians’ access to information and privacy rights.
“The commissioner’s focus remains on the content of the proposed amendments and their real-world impact,” the office wrote in a statement.
“These are matters of public interest, regardless of political affiliation.”