Ontario Premier Doug Ford has acknowledged his government is clamping down on access to information laws to shield government-related calls he makes and receives on his personal phone.
The province is in the process of overhauling how freedom of information works in Ontario to retroactively exempt all calls and texts from the premier, his cabinet and their staff from public scrutiny.
The move comes barely three months after Ford lost a court battle in which a panel of three judges concluded it was logical he was using his personal phone to conduct government business and that, therefore, it should be subject to freedom of information laws.
Speaking at Queen’s Park on Tuesday, Ford appeared to confirm he was changing the law to shield his own call logs from scrutiny.
“When it comes to a cabinet conversation within cabinet and on personal cellphones that should not be FOIable,” he said, before accusing assembled journalists of looking to publish deeply personal information.
“And I know you guys, you’ll pull out every single number and someone’s health records. You’ll do everything you can if you don’t see eye to eye with someone.”
Through a years-long battle with Global News over his personal cellphone records, Ford’s lawyers have acknowledged that he uses his device for everything. He uses a single phone to make family calls, speak to constituents and speak to cabinet ministers or stakeholders.
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“The practical reality is the premier performs many roles and is never fully off-duty,” lawyers wrote in 2023. “Accordingly, the premier makes and receives calls in his different roles as necessary at all times of the day.”
The premier is the central decision maker in government and cabinet. If passed, the government’s new rules would exempt all his calls from scrutiny, including those in which lobbyists or stakeholders got in touch.
Ford regularly talks about those whom he speaks to on the phone and how they affect his thinking.
During his spat with Diageo over the future of Crown Royal in Ontario, he said he spoke to senior leaders at the international drinks maker before eventually agreeing to a $23 million deal to continue stocking their whiskey in the LCBO.
Defending his plan to tunnel a new expressway under Highway 401, Ford said he had spoken to unnamed experts on tunnelling.
“I talked to some tunnelling folks,” he said in August 2025, before describing a detailed concept for a three-tier tunnel. “So, that’s what we’re doing and people will be thankful (for) years to come, decades to come.”
In the lead-up to the Greenbelt scandal, when some landowners and developers were invited to a stag and doe for the wedding of one of Ford’s daughters, the integrity commissioner said the landowners in attendance were friends of the premier.
“The premier confirmed that those guests, identified as developers, are personal friends.”
Some of those who attended the event would see their land removed from the Greenbelt, according to the integrity commissioner, before the premier was ultimately forced to reverse the policy.
On Monday, however, Ford suggested accessing his call logs would be used by reporters to peddle gossip.
“Maybe you think you should air dirty laundry about someone’s health records or other issues they’re having with their family or in general, but that’s confidential,” he said. “I was sworn to secrecy on personal confidential information coming out of my (constituency) office or on my cellphone.”
The government says it is just “duplicating” the federal government’s freedom of information laws.
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