When Government hides the receipts, citizens pay the price

Ontario Premier Doug Ford ran as a conservative. He governs, too often, like a man allergic to scrutiny.

His government’s latest gutting of Ontario’s freedom of information laws should alarm every citizen in this province. Freedom of information is not a media privilege nor a partisan weapon. It is not some technical nuisance for bureaucrats to manage. It is one of the basic ways ordinary people force powerful people to show their work.

Less information in government is never a good thing. When a government makes it harder to access public records, the public is entitled to ask the obvious question: what are they hiding?

Global News has reported that the Ford government’s changes were tied to efforts to stop the release of messages involving ministers and political staff, after court fights over records connected to the Premier’s phone. The province’s transparency watchdog also confirmed that freedom of information processing was paused while new guidance was prepared. That is damage control.

The Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario warned that these changes would weaken the public’s right to know by excluding records held by the premier, cabinet ministers, parliamentary assistants, and political staff. That matters because political staff are not decorative furniture. They help shape decisions, communicate strategy, manage files, and influence what government does. If their records disappear from public access, then a large part of government disappears from accountability.

This is especially galling coming from a premier who claims the conservative banner. Conservatives are supposed to believe in limited government, citizen oversight, and distrust of concentrated power. Conservatives are supposed to say the state works for the people, not that the people must wait quietly while the state decides what they are allowed to know.

Yet, Ford’s instinct here is not conservative. It is centralizing and secretive. It is the instinct of a government that believes power should be protected from the citizen. That is the opposite of public service.

The numbers prove this system is not some fringe concern. In 2024, Ontarians filed 70,293 freedom of information requests, more than a 6% increase over the previous year. Provincial institutions completed just over 78% of access requests within 30 days, while municipal institutions completed 82% within 30 days. In plain terms, tens of thousands of Ontarians are using this system, and thousands still face delay beyond the standard timeline and that is before we talk about the barriers.

Ontario requires a mandatory $5.00 application fee for an FOI request. Additional costs can apply for search time, record preparation, photocopying, and processing. In many municipal examples, manual search and preparation fees can run around $30 per hour, with printing costs added on top.

For insiders that is manageable. For lawyers, consultants, lobbyists, and journalists, it is the cost of doing business, but for ordinary citizens, the actual cost is not just five dollars. It is knowing where to apply. Knowing how to challenge a denial and knowing whether the government is stonewalling you or whether you simply asked the wrong department. That kind of system rewards sophistication. It punishes everyone else.

It especially punishes minority communities, newcomers, low-income families, and people unfamiliar with government processes. If English is not your first language, if you work two jobs, if you do not trust government, if you have never filed a formal request before, then bureaucracy becomes a wall. When access to information becomes a wall, knowledge stays with the powerful.

Ontario should move in the opposite direction. Public records should be posted online by default, searchable by department, topic, date, and decision-maker. Personal information should be protected, but ordinary public records should not require citizens to beg government for disclosure.

For resident-specific records, Ontario should use secure digital identity verification. Prove you are a resident and then access the information quickly and affordably. That is what modern government should look like.

A government that works for the people does not hide from the people. A premier who has nothing to hide does not rewrite the rules when disclosure becomes inconvenient. When politicians hide the receipts, citizens pay the price.