FIPPA Overhaul — Ford Makes All Premier and Cabinet Records Permanently Secret

The FIPPA amendments were not introduced as standalone legislation — they were buried inside the 2026 Budget Bill, an omnibus measure that limited the scrutiny any single committee or affected group could mount before hearings closed. Global News reported that the changes would permanently exempt the Premier, all cabinet ministers, parliamentary assistants, and their staff from freedom-of-information requests, retroactive to 1988 — the year the original act was passed. Burying a sweeping accountability rollback inside a budget bill is not incidental; it is a deliberate procedural choice designed to minimize public and opposition scrutiny of legislation that directly benefits the people passing it.

The retroactivity is the most legally aggressive element. The amendments would not just shield future records — they would nullify every active and pending FOI request reaching back to 1988. That includes a December 2025 court ruling upholding an IPC order requiring disclosure of Doug Ford's personal cellphone call logs used for government business, and an IPC order requiring former chief of staff Ryan Amato to hand over Greenbelt-related emails sent from his personal accounts. These are not abstract future proceedings — these are specific, active accountability mechanisms that the amendments are designed to terminate. National Observer documented how the amendments would affect the ongoing Greenbelt scandal proceedings and the broader pattern of Freedom of Information obstruction documented across this government.

Information and Privacy Commissioner Patricia Kosseim published a formal rebuttal fact-checking three specific Ford government justifications. First, the government claimed 75,000 FOI requests are filed in Ontario annually — the actual figure is approximately 27,000. Second, the government claimed only media outlets file FOI requests — the IPC's data shows 96% of requests come from businesses and individuals. Third, the government claimed the changes would align Ontario with other provinces — the IPC said the proposal would make Ontario one of the most secretive governments in the country. Beyond the three false statistics, the IPC also identified a cybersecurity paradox at the heart of Ford's stated rationale: the government argued that keeping records on personal devices improves cybersecurity, but the IPC noted that personal devices are less secure than government systems, not more. The IPC's formal statement is a direct public contradiction of the government's own stated reasoning, from the office constitutionally responsible for enforcing the act.

The code-word context matters here. The Ford government previously used "G*" as an internal code word for "Greenbelt" in emails specifically to prevent those records from appearing in FOI keyword searches — a deliberate obstruction tactic documented during the Greenbelt scandal investigation. Under the FIPPA amendments, that pattern of obstruction would receive permanent legislative protection. Beyond the Greenbelt, active FOI battles over Skills Development Fund records — covering hundreds of millions in government grants to politically connected recipients — would be retroactively shielded. National Observer reported on how the IPC's formal rebuttal connected the amendment's real-world impact to the specific accountability proceedings the government was seeking to terminate.

Every other active scandal's pending FOI requests would be permanently shielded by the retroactive exemption. The Greenbelt scandal proceedings — including the IPC order requiring Ryan Amato to produce personal-account emails — would be nullified. Active FOI battles over Skills Development Fund grants to connected recipients would be terminated. Pending requests related to Minister's Zoning Orders issued to politically connected developers would be retroactively immune. The 1988 retroactivity date is not a technical formality — it means every record created by every Premier and every cabinet minister over nearly four decades becomes permanently unreachable by the public, journalists, or the courts.

Ontario would become more secretive than any other province in Canada. The IPC stated plainly that the proposal would place Ontario in a minority of the most secretive jurisdictions globally — not just among Canadian provinces. The ongoing court cases brought by the Globe and Mail and CBC seeking Ford's personal cellphone call logs, which a December 2025 court ruling already upheld as disclosable, would be terminated with no remedy available to the plaintiffs. The Globe and Mail reported that advocates and legal experts described the amendments as the most significant single rollback of public access rights in Ontario's history. Journalists and the public would permanently lose freedom of information as a tool for investigating the executive branch of government.

The IPC's cybersecurity warning carries a systemic implication beyond this specific scandal: if officials believe their personal devices are exempt from accountability, they will increasingly use personal devices for government business — creating precisely the security risk the government claims to be solving. The pattern here mirrors Bill 5, where retroactive changes were engineered to shield past decision-making from scrutiny and oversight mechanisms were removed before they could be applied. Public polling commissioned after the amendments were tabled found 60% of Ontarians opposed the changes, with only 24% in support — a clear signal that the government is acting against expressed public interest on a matter of fundamental democratic accountability.