Ontario's Premier Accountability Dashboard · Queen's Park Watch
Legislature Avoidance — Ford's Accountability Deficit
December 15, 2025
TL;DR
The Ford government has systematically minimized time spent in the Ontario Legislature — the only venue where the Premier faces mandatory daily questioning. In 2019, Ford took the longest legislative break in 25 years. In 2024, sitting days were cancelled so the legislature didn't return until six weeks after the scheduled date. In all of 2025, the government sat just 51 days out of 365. Ford then called a snap election in January 2025 — well ahead of the scheduled June 2026 date — dissolving the legislature while RCMP investigations, Auditor General findings, and FOI battles were all active.
Why It Matters
The snap election call of January 2025 — dissolving the legislature 18 months before it was scheduled — was the most consequential accountability avoidance mechanism of the Ford era. Ford asked Lieutenant Governor Edith Dumont to dissolve the legislature on January 29, 2025, triggering a February 27 vote. The timing was striking: the Auditor General's bombshell Ontario Place/Therme report had been released just weeks earlier in December 2024, finding the province's $2.24 billion deal with the Austrian spa company "not fair, transparent or accountable." The RCMP Greenbelt criminal investigation was ongoing with no charges yet laid. FOI litigation over Ford's personal cellphone records was unresolved. Multiple Integrity Commissioner investigations were active. An election reset the political clock on all of them.
A legislature that rarely sits is a legislature that passes fewer laws — but the Ford government has found a workaround: omnibus bills. When the government does sit, it typically passes massive multi-subject bills under time allocation motions that limit debate. Bills 5, 60, 212, and 257 — each of which made sweeping changes to environmental, water, transportation, and planning law — were pushed through with minimal committee study and limited opposition speaking time. The combination of few sitting days and truncated debate when the House is in session means major legislation passes with less public scrutiny than almost any period in recent Ontario history.
The Globe and Mail's analysis found that provincial legislatures across Canada have been spending fewer days in session over the past decade — but Ontario's decline under Ford has been steeper than most. Critics including the Ontario NDP noted that 51 sitting days in a full calendar year means Ford faced mandatory public questioning from the legislature for less than one day in seven — in a year when his government passed legislation on water privatization, highway construction, homelessness criminalization, endangered species protection, and post-secondary funding.
Legal Actions
In 2019, Ford's government took a summer recess that extended to five months — the longest legislative break Ontario had seen in almost 25 years. The extended recess drew criticism from opposition parties and accountability advocates who noted the legislature is the only venue where the Premier faces mandatory daily questioning. Ford's government offered no explanation for the extended absence beyond standard scheduling.
In 2024, the legislature rose early for the summer and then cancelled the scheduled September sitting days entirely, with MPPs not returning until October 21 — six weeks after the agreed return date of September 9. The extended absence came while the Greenbelt RCMP investigation was active, the Ontario Place Auditor General report was being prepared, and multiple FOI court battles were underway. Opposition parties accused the government of deliberate accountability avoidance. The government offered no public explanation for cancelling the September sittings.
On January 29, 2025, Ford asked Lieutenant Governor Edith Dumont to dissolve the legislature 18 months before the scheduled June 2026 election date, triggering a February 27 vote. The snap election came weeks after the Auditor General's Ontario Place bombshell report, while the Greenbelt RCMP criminal investigation was ongoing, while FOI litigation over Ford's personal cellphone records was unresolved, and while multiple Integrity Commissioner investigations were active. Calling the election reset the political clock before these accountability processes could conclude. Ford won a third majority on February 27, 2025.
In 2025, following the snap election that returned Ford with a third majority, the Ontario Legislature sat for just 51 days out of 365 — approximately 14% of the year. The government sat roughly 28 days each in the fall 2024, spring 2025, and fall 2025 sessions. Ontario NDP critics publicly documented the figure: "51 out of 365 days." The government passed major legislation on water privatization, endangered species, housing, homelessness, and highway construction during this period, often under time allocation motions that limited opposition debate to hours per bill.
Rippling Effects
The accountability gap created by minimal sitting time is compounding. Each question period missed is a day's worth of documented government positions, forced clarifications, and public record that doesn't exist. Each cancelled sitting week is committee hearings that don't happen, witnesses who aren't called, documents that aren't tabled. Ontario's parliamentary record for the Ford years is thinner than it should be — not because the government is governing less, but because the formal mechanisms of accountability have been systematically reduced while government activity (and its controversies) have continued unabated.
The 2025 snap election illustrated how the avoidance strategy interacts with democratic timing. Ford called the election citing federal uncertainty under the Liberal government — but the practical effect was to go to voters before the Greenbelt RCMP investigation concluded, before a reckoning with the Ontario Place costs was fully absorbed, and before the FOI legislation stripping the Premier's office of accountability obligations had been introduced (it came in March 2026, after the election). He won a third majority. The scandals that were live during the election campaign were not fully adjudicated by voters because the full information was not yet public — partly because his own government had been fighting to suppress it.
Ford's approach to legislative accountability represents a coherent theory of minority-time governance: the less time spent in the chamber, the fewer the opportunities for the opposition to force accountability, the freer the government is to act between sessions. When combined with the proposed FOI changes that would exempt the Premier's and cabinet ministers' offices from public records law entirely, the picture that emerges is of a government that has systematically dismantled each mechanism — legislative sitting time, Freedom of Information, Integrity Commissioner referrals — through which citizens might hold it accountable.