It’s hard for a headline to be shocking in 2026, but Doug Ford making himself exempt from Freedom of Information requests genuinely stunned me. It’s so flagrant! MAGA coined “fake news,” and now Maple MAGA just eliminated the very bedrock of fact-finding for journalists.

The new law will mean that the records of Premier Doug Ford, his cabinet ministers, and parliamentary assistants will no longer be subject to freedom-of-information laws. The public could still file an FOI to obtain the records of public servants in government ministries. But who’d want to?

Ford waited until late last Friday afternoon to announce his government was “modernizing” FOI laws, and will do so retroactively. The records that journalists already filed FOIs for years ago would remain secret under the new law.

This isn’t “modernization”…this is a cover-up.

I wrote here last week about Doug Ford losing a court battle initially launched in 2022 and resolved in December 2025 to keep his government records hidden from the public. The gist of that was simple: Ford tried claiming that releasing his phone records pertaining to government business would violate his personal privacy because he used his personal phone for government business, contrary to policy.

That’s why politicians get government-issued phones, to separate their personal and professional communications. Ford could have easily protected his personal privacy by complying with policy.

The Information and Privacy Commission rejected Ford’s argument. Ford planned to appeal, determined to keep his records secret, but now the appeal is moot because he’s simply rewriting privacy laws to put himself above releasing records. The IPC released a statement yesterday, refusing to beat around the bush: “By changing the law retroactively, the government’s message is plain: if oversight bodies get in the way, just change the rules.”

We wouldn’t know about the Greenbelt scandal without the diligent work of Emma McIntosh and Fatima Syed at the Narwhal, who filed FOIs and learned that senior Ford staffers were discussing Greenbelt changes long before the government made the policy public. The timeline and who knew what mattered. Now the RCMP is investigating whether Doug Ford tipped off friendly developers thanks to them.

It reeks of crime. The Bradford Bypass and Highway 413 are sketchy too.

The Greenbelt isn’t the only scandal where Ford insider’s phone records were shielded from scrutiny. Doug Ford’s chief of staff failed to disclose his phone records in conversations with high-level Metrolinx officials—they were gone, wiped, because he got a new personal phone, which he was using to conduct government business.

Noticing a pattern?

FOIs are how journalists and also everyday concerned citizens (which should be emphasized! Anybody can file an FOI request) get raw information, the politician’s own words. It’s one of the best tools for learning what’s discussed in backrooms, behind closed doors, where decisions get made.

In an era of distrust, division and rampant corruption, obliterating how residents and reporters get reliable facts is an open declaration of war against transparency. Indeed, Ford was blasted for what people are calling freedom from information from across the political spectrum. Naturally, the Liberals, NDP, and Greens criticized the move, but so did the Canadian Taxpayers Federation:

“Premier Doug Ford is trying to hide records from the public and roll back the ability of everyday taxpayers from holding the government accountable,” said Noah Jarvis CTF Ontario Director. “What is Ford and his cabinet trying to hide?”

For good measure, the Ford government didn’t just make himself exempt from FOIs, he also doubled the amount of time FOIs will take to process for the few people still subject to them, from 30 days to 60.

The calculation is simple: Ford must have anticipated that this move would draw widespread condemnation and fury, so what he’s hiding from the public would surely draw even more.

Last night, on March 16, Doug Ford gave a very different justification for increased secrecy: “We’ve got to protect ourselves against the communist Chinese that are infiltrating our country, Canada, the US, everything into our education system, into high tech companies.”

I’d love to be measured and sober here, but this is a buffoonish, laughably thin pretext for a Canadian premier to shroud himself in secrecy.  It’s more than a little self-serving and convenient. For one thing, the US very much isn’t our country: the US is the “economic uncertainty” Ford is supposedly trying to “Protect Ontario” from. Even putting the xenophobic boogeyman aside, what would Chinese spies even hope to uncover from this provincial politician, how to sell beers in gas stations and not build transit?

Here’s one example of real things more FOIs could help shine a light on:

Mega donor De Gasperis’ TACC Group bought 60.5 acres of property across the street from the original Ontario Science Centre in March, 2019. Then, in April 2019, Doug Ford ripped up the Downtown Relief Line plans and replaced them with his signature Ontario Line, which featured a shiny new subway station for the Ontario Science Centre. Next, of course, Ford abruptly closed the Science Centre, leaving his developer friend with his own personal subway station.

Every neighbourhood deserves access to public transit, but surely the presence of the Ontario Science Centre impacted the decision to create an Ontario Science Centre subway station.

Now, I don’t mean to cast aspersions. Maybe De Gasperis got lucky here, like he did with the Greenbelt! But anybody looking to dig up what really happened and get beyond suspicions and partisan talking points would need FOIs, which Doug Ford just cancelled.

Ford is currently under ongoing criminal RCMP investigation. He shut down the legislature to avoid scrutiny as news broke of his Minister of Labour giving millions from the Skills Development Funds to underqualified personal friends instead of high-scoring applicants. So really, I can’t think of anybody who deserves the benefit of the doubt less than Doug Ford.

And let’s be real…is there even any doubt?