Ford government's regressive FOI changes will be awful for Ottawa

Ontario Premier Doug Ford during a panel discussion with other premiers at Canadian Chamber of Commerce event held at the Rogers Centre in Ottawa April 20, 2026. Photo by HYUNGCHEOL PARK /Postmedia

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The recent ramming through of amendments to Ontario’s provincial and local freedom of information legislation — as part of an omnibus budget bill 97 — will hit home right away, including in Ottawa.

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The exclusion of provincial records on matters from the Greenbelt exploitation to the premier’s cell phone records is very controversial.

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But I would argue that the changes enacted are equally — if not more devastating — at the local level for users looking for records from city halls, police departments, schools or hospitals.

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That’s because both the municipal and provincial acts want to force users into access plans that can require requests to undergo wording changes that agencies prefer — and if users disagree with those changes, the government can then unilaterally declare those requests as abandoned.

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The amendments also mean more potential delay tactics, as bodies can dally around with FOI applications for up to 60 days, instead the previous 30-day time limit, and even then they can come back asking for more time to process the requests.

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So, for instance, most (if not all) of my many FOI requests to the City of Ottawa on the initial LRT problems — that were featured in multiplestories in the Citizen — could now be subject to replies that effectively say “we do not like what you asked so we consider your request abandoned.”

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There is a certain irony to this, as it was Ontario premier Doug Ford who called a rare public inquiry into the failings of Ottawa’s LRT, an inquiry that came up with more factual evidence and a damming public report.

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Sadly, though, while being able to give a constructive presentation on the many faults of Ottawa’s LRT at that inquiry, I and others were prevented from presenting our objections to the Ford FOI amendments in front of a legislative committee.

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The reality is that now all provincial ministers and parliamentary assistant records get to permanently exclude their records dating back to 1988.

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This goes further than any other Canadian jurisdiction and means Ford (and future Premiers of Ontario) can hide the key decision-making records of the government and the lobbying and developer efforts his government receives with no chance of Information Commissioner reviews.

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That means that I would now never get the records of auto insurance companies successfully lobbying his cabinet for higher rates that affected millions in Ontario. Nor would I have been able to have the Information Commissioner do reviews that agreed the withheld records could not be claimed as cabinet confidences.

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I have so many documents via FOI requests that Ontario Information and Privacy Commissioner Pat Kosseim e-mailed me saying I should seek legal assistance if any records I had obtained are now called into question.

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I know how devastating that can be having been sued by a commercial company who did not like the wording or my requests for his company’s polling contracts in Ottawa, Durham, and Quebec City. After incurring $15,000 in legal expenses. I avoided becoming a party and being held liable for millions of dollars for the “libellous” action of filing routine contract requests.