An advocacy group is planning to file a constitutional challenge to Ontario’s freedom of information clampdown, arguing it breaches the right of voters to be informed for a meaningful debate about public issues.
Democracy Watch, a non-profit citizen group based in Ottawa, announced Thursday it is working to file a challenge to a transparency clampdown included in the Ford government’s 2026 budget.
It tried and failed to obtain an injunction last week, before the bill received Royal Assent and became law.
“The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled in a few different cases that voters have a right to disclosure of government information that voters need to have meaningful debate about public issues, including the conduct of government officials, politicians and government institutions,” co-founder Duff Conacher told Global News.
“So, that’s the main basis of the court case.”
The changes Democracy Watch is looking to challenge were tucked inside the budget and passed into law using a night sitting of the legislature and bypassing the normal committee process.
An overhaul to freedom of information rules will exclude the premier, his cabinet and all of their staff from disclosing emails, texts, phone records or any other documents they’ve created in their government work.
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It’s a move Ontario’s information and privacy commission urged the government to abandon, saying it would make Ontario less secure and less transparent than any other jurisdiction in the country.
The Ford government, however, didn’t heed the calls, arguing it was updating an outdated law and aligning with other parts of the country.
Instead, the province bypassed committee hearings and scheduled a night sitting of the legislature to pass the changes before a break week for the legislature.
Conacher said his organization had tried to win an injunction to block the law from being passed on the grounds that it could create a vacuum in which records may be destroyed.
The government said during that injunction, and has reiterated since, that all existing record laws will still apply, prohibiting any records from being destroyed.
“Democracy Watch attempted to win an injunction last Thursday to require the cabinet to retain the records and also to suspend the provisions from coming into force until a court case was heard, in part to ensure that the records would be retained,” Conacher explained.
The Ford government did not respond to questions from Global News ahead of publication.
It has insisted its law will bring the province in line with other Canadian jurisdictions, something the Information and Privacy Commissioner has said isn’t the case.
Democracy Watch hasn’t formally filed its legal challenge yet, but said it is currently in the process and hopes its case will test whether or not the government can pass retroactive laws to overturn court decisions directed at members of cabinet.
The freedom of information changes, now passed, effectively make a court decision ordering Premier Doug Ford to turn over his cellphone records moot.
The budget was tabled shortly after a court concluded that Ford was using his personal phone to conduct government business and ruled that some of those records should be public.
That ruling sided with Global News in a years-long transparency battle to understand who the premier speaks to through a personal device critics have said he uses to avoid accountability.
Conacher said he wanted to see his group’s legal challenge test whether the premier can pass laws to overturn court decisions that specifically don’t go in his favour.
“Ford admitted that the changes were really about hiding his cellphone records from the public and other cabinet communications with lobbyists and others trying to influence the government,” he said.
“And that’s why these changes are so dangerous and applying them retroactively just makes some doubly dangerous and doubly undemocratic.”
Keep this government, transparent
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More people need to see that. His voters especially
Ford is nothing but a lying, cheating politician. If he has nothing to hide or doesn’t want to hide anything , why change the law to suit your own needs. Why have night time legislative meetings to hurry and pass it through. Ford is doing nothing for the people in Ontario, every issue is for himself and to line his wealthy buddies pockets. Even calling an election was for himself to stay in power longer, we have the worst unemployment, people can’t get timely healthcare, education system there taking over school by school and the list goes on. He’s just like Trump a vile, egotistical , self centred, all bark and no bite, snake in the grass. He’s a criminal in his own right.