{"id":688530,"date":"2026-05-23T12:31:20","date_gmt":"2026-05-23T12:31:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/688530\/"},"modified":"2026-05-23T12:31:20","modified_gmt":"2026-05-23T12:31:20","slug":"ontario-government-lifts-freeze-on-freedom-of-information-requests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/688530\/","title":{"rendered":"Ontario government lifts freeze on freedom of information requests"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ontario\u2019s transparency watchdog is confirming a week-long pause on all freedom of information<\/a> requests, which lasted more than a week, has officially been lifted, as Premier Doug Ford says only \u201cthe media party\u201d cares about transparency rules.<\/p>\n

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Before the Victoria Day long weekend, senior civil servants who process access to information requests across the provincial government were told to pause their work while new guidance rules were written<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The pause, confirmed to Global News by sources, hasn\u2019t been formally announced or shared with the province\u2019s transparency watchdog. There isn\u2019t a timeline for processing transparency requests to resume.<\/p>\n

While the premier\u2019s office has not responded to questions about the pause over the past two days, the Information and Privacy Commissioner confirmed it had taken place and, on Friday, that it was over.<\/p>\n

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\u201cOur understanding is that FOI offices were instructed to pause responses to FOI requests while updated guidance was developed on the interpretation and application of the new retroactive exclusion of government-related records held by the premier, cabinet members, parliamentary assistants, and political staff,\u201d a spokesperson for the commissioner said in a statement.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe further understand that the pause has since been lifted with the release of the guidance, which we hope will provide clear and consistent direction to OPS staff on how to interpret and apply these new precedent-setting provisions.\u201d<\/p>\n

The relatively unprecedented freeze on freedom of information requests is something the population doesn\u2019t care about, Premier Ford said Friday.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know who FOIs? The media party, they\u2019re obsessed with it,\u201d he claimed.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re duplicating what the federal government is doing, simple. We were an outlier. I should have done this eight years ago, but I didn\u2019t. The media party can focus on that, I\u2019m going to focus on job creation.\u201d<\/p>\n

The government-wide freeze on transparency requests, however, impacted thousands of FOIs filed by members of the public, lawyers and businesses.<\/p>\n

Data from the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario shows that, in 2024, a little over 1,000 requests \u2014 or about four per cent of the 27,000 total \u2014 came from the media.<\/p>\n

Members of the public filed more than 7,000 requests that year, while businesses filed almost 11,000. Individuals using agents filed another 7,000.<\/p>\n

The freeze was initially communicated to civil servants using a Microsoft Teams message, sources previously told Global News.<\/p>\n

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Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles said the government was using recent, controversial changes to freedom of information laws \u201cas an excuse to obliterate access to any information now.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\t&copy 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ontario\u2019s transparency watchdog is confirming a week-long pause on all freedom of information requests, which lasted more than…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":688531,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[49,48,13403,233941,44,13404,714],"class_list":["post-688530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-ford-government","tag-freedom-of-information","tag-news","tag-ontario-politics","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=688530"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688530\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/688531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=688530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=688530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=688530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}