Ontario’s transparency watchdog is pouring cold water on some of the Ford government’s central justifications for clamping down on freedom of information, saying the changes will actually make the province more secretive and less secure.
The province recently announced it would rewrite its access to information laws to retroactively exclude all records belonging to the premier, cabinet ministers, parliamentary assistants and their staff.
The sweeping changes — which will effectively shield all calls to and from the premier and nullify a recent legal defeat — were explained by the government as a long-overdue update.
“I think we need to recognize this is 40-year-old legislation, almost 40 years old, so updating it was well overdue,” Stephen Crawford, the minister for public and business service delivery and procurement, said when he unveiled the changes.
“We’re going to be in line with the majority of the rest of the Canadian provinces and the federal government.”
Premier Ford has echoed that argument, suggesting his government isn’t “pulling a rabbit out of your hat.”
But that claim, Information and Privacy Commissioner Patricia Kosseim told Global News, isn’t entirely accurate.
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“This proposal would put Ontario offside,” Kosseim said in an interview. “Certainly, by our analysis, this would put Ontario in the minority of provinces and jurisdictions in Canada that would take such an extreme approach.”
The key change Ontario is making is that its law would look to exclude — rather than exempt — political records from transparency and privacy rules.
That means that neither civil servants nor the Information and Privacy Commissioner would have any jurisdiction over how premiers, cabinet ministers or their staff handle sensitive government records.
“There wouldn’t be even a conversation about whether these records are legitimately (excluded) and should be in the public domain, whether there’s a public interest in releasing them,” Kosseim said.
The government has also argued that changing the freedom of information and privacy laws in Ontario is key to combatting foreign threats.
“We’ve got to protect ourselves against the communist Chinese that are infiltrating our country, Canada, the U.S., everything into our education system, into high-tech companies,” Ford tried to explain at the start of the week.
“That’s who we have to protect from, too. So it’s serious.”
Despite Premier Ford’s claim, the commissioner said excluding the records would actually make them less secure.
By taking away oversight and tacitly endorsing the use of personal devices, there are concerns about whether sensitive records will be digitally protected or returned when staff or politicians leave government.
“They’re excluding it not only from the freedom of information parts of the act but also the protection of privacy parts of the act. And so there’s a, I think, a very concerning issue there of what happens to this information when it’s not subject to the same privacy and security requirements as other government-related information,” Kosseim said.
“What happens to all of these mobile devices, personal devices, computers, emails, texts, not only for the persons and individuals who are in and hold these positions currently. But what happens to those when they move on, change positions or leave government?”
Kosseim said she’s worried that excluding political records from privacy and transparency legislation would actually make them more vulnerable.
“I would say they would be less protected because they would not be subject to the privacy and security legal requirements under the act,” she said.
“And they would not be subjected to oversight by my office, which is also concerning.”
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