Ontario's Premier Accountability Dashboard · Queen's Park Watch
Dean Beeby
Independent journalist / Substack
Dean Beeby is a veteran investigative journalist and FOI expert. He has written extensively on the Ford government's FIPPA overhaul, calling the government's privacy and cybersecurity justifications "so much bull" and "a straw man argument." He runs a Substack newsletter tracking government secrecy and noted that existing national security exemptions in FIPPA already addressed the China espionage rationale Ford cited.
Connected Scandals
The Ford government buried amendments inside the 2026 Budget Bill that would permanently exempt the Premier, all cabinet ministers, and their staff from freedom-of-information requests — retroactive to 1988 — nullifying every pending FOI request and active court case, including those seeking Doug Ford's personal cellphone records and Greenbelt-related emails. Ontario's own privacy watchdog publicly called three of Ford's stated justifications factually incorrect.
Beeby has been one of the leading expert voices documenting and challenging the Ford government's FIPPA overhaul. He publicly dismissed Ford's stated cybersecurity and national security justifications as a "straw man argument," noting that FIPPA already contains national security exemptions that would cover the China espionage scenario the government cited.