Ontario to introduce bill exempting Premier, cabinet from FOI requests

Open this photo in gallery:

The Ontario government says it will introduce legislation that would exempt the Premier, cabinet ministers and their offices from having to respond to freedom of information requests, allowing them to keep documents and e-mails about their decision-making secret.

In a summary of the proposed changes released on Friday, Ontario says it is one of the only provinces that subjects these internal documents to freedom of information laws, which allow citizens, journalists and advocacy groups to request to obtain a wide range of government records.

The province says the proposed changes are needed to ensure cabinet ministers can have frank debates about policy decisions in confidence. But opposition parties and other critics say the move is anti-democratic and designed to shield the government from accountability.

The changes follow the government’s loss in a court battle over the call logs for Premier Doug Ford’s personal cellphone, which he uses for government business. Critics say the public is entitled to see who has influenced the Premier’s decisions. But the government argued releasing the phone records would be an invasion of privacy. A court in January sided with the province’s Information and Privacy Commissioner and ordered the records released, but the government had said it would seek to appeal.

Alex Bozikovic: Doug Ford’s obsession to expand downtown Toronto airport would be economic vandalism

Now, the government says it intends to rewrite its Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act to retroactively keep those phone records, and reams of other government documents, secret.

If passed, the legislation, to be introduced in the spring, would quash existing and future requests for any document held in the Premier’s office and the offices of any of his cabinet ministers, such as their e-mails, internal memos and meeting schedules. The proposed exemptions would also cover offices of MPPs who serve as parliamentary assistants, a group that includes all but a handful of Mr. Ford’s 79 Progressive Conservative MPPs.

The changes could also affect other access to information battles launched by media outlets, advocacy groups or the opposition. Among them is one over a political staffer’s messages related to the government’s aborted attempt to remove land owned by a handful of connected developers from its protected Greenbelt, an affair that is subject to an RCMP probe.

Open this photo in gallery:

Ontario’s freedom of information watchdog condemned the exemptions. In a statement, Information and Privacy Commissioner Patricia Kosseim called the proposal “shocking” and “alarming.” Noting that existing rules protect personal and confidential information, she said the change is “about hiding government-related business to evade public accountability.”

And she linked the move to the Mr. Ford’s phone-records case: “By changing the law retroactively, the government’s message is plain: if oversight bodies get in the way, just change the rules.”

The government says its changes would still allow for the release of records in possession of civil servants not employed in minister’s offices, such as senior bureaucrats.

The changes would also extend the length of time the government has to respond to all access to information requests, to 45 business days from the current 30 calendar days. And they would allow the government to request two deadline extensions, instead of one.

Stephen Crawford, Ontario’s Minister of Public and Business Service Delivery and Procurement, unveiled the proposed changes on Friday, saying they were needed to better protect cabinet confidentiality, and allow ministers to benefit from “candid, evidence-based advice.”

However, freedom of information exemptions in Ontario already allows the government to keep cabinet deliberations and advice to the government secret.

Mr. Crawford said the existing law dates back to 1988, when e-mail, smartphones and texts did not exist.

Library and Archives planning deep cuts to access to information team, document shows

“When this legislation was written, it was 10 years before the Spice Girls were a thing,” he said.

The minister said Ontario’s changes would bring it in line with most other provinces and the federal government, which allow similar exemptions for cabinet ministers’ offices. He said Nova Scotia is the only other province that has an access to information system that requires the same disclosures as Ontario.

According to material provided by the provincial government, only the federal government, Nunavut, Saskatchewan and Quebec explicitly exclude all ministers’ offices or have access to information laws that do not cover them.

Other provinces, except Nova Scotia, exclude “personal, political and constituency records” of all members of their legislatures and cabinet ministers. Alberta and Prince Edward Island also explicitly exclude “communications related to cabinet ministers.”

During the 2015 federal election campaign, then-Liberal-leader Justin Trudeau promised to amend the law to make ministers’ offices, including that of the prime minister, subject to the federal Access to Information Act. But his government never followed through.

Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles called the province’s proposed exemptions outrageous.

“No government changes the FOI rules unless they are trying to hide corruption,” Ms. Stiles said, charging that the move frees politicians and their aides to make deals with insiders without fear of future scrutiny.

Open this photo in gallery:

She cited the role FOI requests have played in the Greenbelt affair, the controversy around the money handed out by the province’s Skills Development Fund and the government’s decision to suddenly shut down the Ontario Science Centre. She vowed to fight the move, suggesting it could end up in court.

Liberal MPP Stephanie Smyth said the proposed changes make the government look afraid of information that could be released.

“This government, this Premier, talks all about ‘protecting Ontario,’” she said, referring to the province’s current ad campaign and the PC campaign slogan in last year’s election. “This is really about the Premier protecting himself and his government.”

James Turk, an expert on freedom of information and the director of the Centre for Free Expression at Toronto Metropolitan University, said Ontario’s proposed legislation would be a “a very anti-democratic step.”

In recent years, several provincial governments – including Alberta’s, Nova Scotia’s and British Columbia’s – have been re-examining their freedom of information statutes, in part because many of these access laws were enacted in the 1980s. But those changes, Prof. Turk said, have largely brought about “greater opacity,” not transparency.

Salvator Cusimano, the executive director of the anti-corruption group Transparency International Canada, said the changes “would remove an essential safeguard against corruption and unethical behaviour, not only by elected officials but by their appointed political aides.”

Secret Canada: When it comes to records, justice is blind

The issue of Mr. Ford’s cellphone – the number for which he routinely gives out at events, receiving hundreds of texts and calls – has long dogged the government. For nearly five years, it has been embroiled in disputes over requests for the Premier’s call logs from both Global News and Brooks Fallis, a critical care doctor who alleges his criticism of Mr. Ford during the pandemic cost him his job.

Paul Champ, Dr. Fallis’s lawyer, said in an interview on Friday that, “It’s pretty obvious that there’s a connection between this case against the Premier and the change to the legislation.”

In 2023, a Globe and Mail investigation called Secret Canada found a litany of problems with Canada’s access to information systems – including missed deadlines and overuse of redactions – and revealed that governments rarely face consequences for ignoring requirements to produce information.