Doug Ford’s daily calendar kept secret after changes to Ontario’s FOI law

Premier Doug Ford’s daily calendar will now be kept secret from the public, CBC News has confirmed, following recent changes to Ontario’s freedom of information law — which no longer includes access to records held by ministers and their offices. 

Unlike his predecessors, Ford hasn’t provided the media with a daily itinerary of his public events since he took office in 2018. As a result, CBC News has routinely filed freedom of information (FOI) requests for his calendar and has regularly received those records with some redactions.

But the rejection of a FOI request from late last month confirmed the records are no longer accessible. 

The retroactive changes to Ontario’s Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA) to exclude records held by ministers, parliamentary assistants and their offices were announced in March and came into force in late April.

One reason the province cited for the change was that Ontario was one of the only jurisdictions in Canada without “explicit protections” for records belonging to cabinet ministers. But the amendments sparked outrage from experts, opposition parties and the province’s privacy commissioner. 

James Turk, director of the Centre for Free Expression at Toronto Metropolitan University, says Ford’s calendar was already protected from revealing cabinet confidences by existing provisions in the legislation, so he finds the changes to exclude it entirely “mind boggling.”

“It’s a fundamental assault on democracy, he’s the premier of our province, we have a right to know what he does and who he meets with,” Turk said.

“The media are the public’s eyes and ears and basically he’s putting a blindfold on them.”

Alasdair Roberts has been studying FOI laws in Canada and abroad for 30 years and considers the changes “offensive to the principle of transparency.”

“Any well-structured freedom of information law should acknowledge that sometimes the government has a right to withhold information, but also guarantee that there’s some independent body making sure that the balance is being struck appropriately,” said Roberts, a professor of public policy at University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

“But what the Ontario government has done has made it impossible for anyone to figure out whether that balance is being struck.”

CBC News contacted Ford’s office to ask why the provincial government moved to exclude ministers’ records, like Ford’s calendar, and whether the premier’s office would proactively share his calendar given it is no longer subject to FOI requests. 

Ford’s office did not respond, but forwarded the request to the office of Stephen Crawford, the minister of public and business service delivery, who announced the changes in March.

In an emailed statement, his press secretary did not respond to questions about Ford’s calendar, and echoed the province’s long-standing reasoning for the amendments.

“Ontario’s FOI and privacy laws were built for a pre-digital era with legislation that has not been updated for 40 years, this creates delays and inconsistent practices,” said Giulia Paikin.

“That’s why we are establishing a clear and modern FOI system while bringing Ontario in line with nearly every other province, and the Federal government, who have had similar legislation in place for decades.”

Turk acknowledges the changes mimic federal access legislation, but argues that’s taken the law in the wrong direction, because the federal legislation “has probably the most secretive cabinet confidentiality provisions of any country in the Western world.”

“There was nothing that was at risk in Ontario previously,” he said. “There were all sorts of exclusions and exceptions as to what we could get.”

In most provinces and territories the premier’s office no longer proactively releases a daily calendar of public events. Though a few do provide weekly lists of some public appearances and some will release the premier’s calendar through an FOI request. 

Roberts says there was a period between the 1980s and early 2000s when transparency “had the wind behind it” and many governments around the world and in Canada were adopting open government laws.

But he says that changed in the last 20-plus years as the world was hit by crises like 9/11, the COVID-19 pandemic and the current tensions between the U.S. and Canada. 

“Governments very often seize on these crises as opportunities to roll back transparency requirements,” said Roberts.

“It’s especially problematic because it’s at these kind of hinge moments where the stakes are really high, where governments are making really consequential decisions, that you do want transparency just as a basic point of democracy. These are the moments in history where people should be allowed to see what’s happening inside their governments.”