Ford asks people not to text him at night, complaining ‘all I hear is the buzzing’

Ontario Premier Doug Ford has asked people to stop texting him during the night because he says a barrage of messages is interrupting the few hours of sleep he is able to get.

At the end of a news conference on Tuesday, Ford addressed people he said had texted him personally and were waiting for him to respond, estimating he had more than 4,000 unread text messages he needed to reply to.

“Please, have patience with me. Don’t get insulted if I don’t get back to you,” Ford said. “They’re coming in hundreds, if not a thousand a day and I cannot keep up.”

The premier controversially uses the same device for government work, personal and party business and recently lost a transparency battle involving the device in front of the province’s privacy watchdog.

Late last year, the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario ruled Ford was using his personal phone for government business and ordered civil servants to begin the work to access and disclose his personal call logs.

The decision handed down by the privacy watchdog agreed with a position taken by Global News that Ford was using his personal device for government work. The ruling said the premier would need to make those calls public under Ontario’s access to information laws.

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“The affected party chose to make these calls on his personal cell phone and not his government-issued cell phone,” the adjudicator wrote in their 2024 decision.

“It would be contrary to the purposes of the Act to permit the affected party to shield information relating to government-related phone calls by simply making or receiving those calls on his personal device.”

The Ford government has appealed the ruling, asking a court to grant a judicial review. That appeal will be heard later this year.

On Tuesday, Ford appeared to acknowledge some of the difficulties of using a single device to handle his various responsibilities, including as Ontario’s premier. He suggested receiving calls and texts to just one device was keeping him up at night because he can’t turn his phone off in case an emergency strikes and he needs to be summoned in his role as premier.

“And for the people that text me throughout the night — please, wait until the morning time because I have to keep my phone on and the four or five — I’m lucky if I get five hours sleep — the four hours sleep I get every night, all I hear is the buzzing beside me,” he said.

“The reason I keep it on is for emergencies, in case there’s something happening (that is) catastrophic in the province.”

Opposition parties have previously called on Ford to make his cellphone records public but he has refused, citing the privacy of residents who text and call him.

On Tuesday, the premier promised to try and return the thousands of messages left for him on his phone.

“I respect you calling me — but please just have patience for me to get back to you,” he said. “I’m doing everything I possibly can to get back to you on your cellphone.”