The Ford authorities is formally shutting down a freedom of knowledge request to entry authorities calls on the premier’s private cellphone information, formalizing a transparency clampdown it introduced in March.
Earlier than politicians returned to Queen’s Park for the spring session, the federal government introduced it might tighten Ontario’s transparency legal guidelines to supply near-blanket exemptions for the premier, ministers and all of their political employees.
The adjustments, which have been introduced in as a part of the 2026 funds, have been utilized retroactively and meant that two courtroom orders for Premier Doug Ford to launch authorities calls on his private system have been successfully moot.
Earlier this yr, a panel of three Ontario judges sided with World Information and upheld a ruling from the Data and Privateness Commissioner (IPC) ordering Ford to reveal the government-related calls he makes from his private system.
Then the attraction courtroom dismissed the federal government’s request to overturn the choice, which got here as a part of a years-long transparency battle centring on every week of name logs on the premier’s private telephone from the week the federal government determined to permit growth on protected lands within the Greenbelt.
Get every day Nationwide information
Get every day Canada information delivered to your inbox so you may by no means miss the day’s prime tales.
The attraction courtroom determination briefly put an order again into impact, telling civil servants to start work to acquire the premier’s cellphone information.
That was till the federal government issued a brand new determination, claiming the premier’s information are exempt after it modified the legislation.
“Briefly, the request is denied as a result of it falls exterior the scope of the Freedom of Data and Privateness Act,” the letter, despatched to World Information and the Data and Privateness Commissioner, learn.
“In accordance with part 65(18) of the FIPPA, which gives that the FIPPA doesn’t apply to information within the custody of a minister of the Crown or the minister’s workplace, the Request for entries, in the event that they exist, fall exterior the scope of the FIPPA. Cupboard Workplace won’t be searching for to acquire any of the impugned information from the Premier.”
Ontario NDP Chief Marit Stiles stated Ford had handed laws designed to overturn his authorized loss.
“You don’t change the legislation to clamp down on transparency except you may have one thing to cover,” she stated in a press release.
“It couldn’t be clearer that Doug Ford gutted Freedom of Data legal guidelines to cowl up his tracks. The individuals of Ontario should know what’s so dangerous that the Premier is able to change the legal guidelines of the land to cover it.”
The federal government has made retroactive, sweeping adjustments to the liberty of knowledge legal guidelines to replace them and produce them in step with different jurisdictions.
Ford has acknowledged that the adjustments, no less than partly, are motivated by courtroom rulings on his cellphone.
“With regards to a cupboard dialog inside cupboard and on private cellphones that shouldn’t be FOIable,” he stated in Might, earlier than accusing assembled journalists of trying to publish deeply private data.
“And I do know you guys, you’ll pull out each single quantity and somebody’s well being information. You’ll do all the things you possibly can in case you don’t see eye to eye with somebody.”
The premier’s workplace didn’t provide a remark for this story, saying Ford’s earlier feedback stand.
© 2026 World Information, a division of Corus Leisure Inc.
