TORONTO- Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s daily calendar will now be kept entirely secret from the public, following retroactive changes to the province’s freedom of information laws. CBC News confirmed the development after receiving a formal rejection to a Freedom of Information (FOI) request filed late last month. The legislative overhaul officially strips the public and the media of their ability to access records held by cabinet ministers, parliamentary assistants, and their respective offices.
Unlike his predecessors, Premier Ford has consistently refused to provide the media with a daily itinerary of his public events since taking office in 2018. To counter this lack of transparency, news outlets routinely relied on FOI requests to track his official engagements, receiving redacted versions of his calendar. However, under the newly amended Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA)—which was introduced in March and quietly took effect in late April—such records are now completely shielded from public scrutiny.
The provincial government defended the controversial amendments by arguing that Ontario was previously one of the few jurisdictions in Canada lacking “explicit protections” for records belonging to cabinet ministers. Government officials stated that the 40-year-old, pre-digital legislation needed a modern overhaul to eliminate administrative delays and bring Ontario in line with federal and provincial standards across the country. The Premier’s office declined to comment on whether it would consider proactively releasing the calendar, forwarding all inquiries to the office of Stephen Crawford, the Minister of Public and Business Service Delivery.
The policy shift has triggered widespread outrage from transparency advocates, opposition parties, and Ontario’s privacy commissioner. James Turk, director of the Centre for Free Expression at Toronto Metropolitan University, condemned the changes as a “fundamental assault on democracy,” noting that existing provisions already adequately protected sensitive cabinet confidences. Experts further argued that while Ontario’s new rules mimic federal access legislation, the federal system is widely regarded as having some of the most secretive cabinet confidentiality laws in the Western world, making it a step backward for public accountability.
