Facing the prospect of a general strike in 2022 over his government’s use of the notwithstanding clause to legislate education support staff back to work, Ontario Premier Doug Ford blinked.

At a hastily scheduled news conference, he said he would rescind the law, explaining he’d been “on the phone all night” returning calls about the move.

But call records obtained by Global News showed Ford’s work phone hadn’t been used. Months of call logs from the period, which also included the decision to remove protected land from the Greenbelt, were blank.

Through a lengthy freedom of information appeal process, government lawyers admitted Ford uses his personal phone to make and receive calls in his capacity as premier.

The Information and Privacy Commission (IPC), which oversees access to information appeals, ruled the premier was using his personal phone to bypass transparency and ordered him to disclose the records.

The government refused, seeking a judicial review. That case was heard in December, and a panel of three judges rejected it in less than three weeks.

The province said it intended to appeal, but a few weeks later, it unveiled sweeping retroactive changes to freedom of information laws that would effectively void the defeat.

The changes would exclude all calls, communications and other records belonging to cabinet ministers, the premier and their staff from public release and scrutiny.

In a blistering statement, the IPC accused Ford and his ministers of moving the goal posts after losing in court.

“By changing the law retroactively, the government’s message is plain: if oversight bodies get in the way, just change the rules,” the commissioner wrote in a statement.

Ford sidestepped a question about his cellphone on Monday, saying he wouldn’t release “confidential information about people’s lives.”

Existing freedom of information laws would not lead to the release of personal information, only calls the premier made or received from government staff, ministers or lobbyists and stakeholders.

“This isn’t anything new,” Ford said. “It’s not pulling a rabbit out of the hat; it’s just duplicating what other provinces had.”

2:38
Doug Ford’s chief of staff ‘missing’ months of government texts after phone was ‘reset’

Premier Ford has long put accessibility at the centre of his political brand, reading out his personal cellphone number at public and private events.

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At a recent televised news conference, he read out his number and asked anyone with issues to reach out. The premier’s personal number is used by voters, mayors and cabinet ministers to speak to the most senior politician in Ontario.

Last year, animal rights advocates got the premier on the phone to discuss the plight of whales at Marineland — precipitating a change in provincial policy to help push the federal government to export the mammals.

Ford has regularly asked people to be patient waiting for him to reply to them, complaining, “all I hear is the buzzing” during the night as people text him.

That accessibility is a key government communications point.

When Minister of Public and Business Service Delivery and Procurement Stephen Crawford announced his plan to limit access to information laws, he pointed to Ford’s phone number as evidence of a transparent government.

“Our premier, as many of you know, has been probably the most accessible political leader in the history of this country, in fact, maybe even the world,” he told reporters.

“He interacts with people on a daily basis, and I certainly appreciate that. I get calls and texts from him at 11 p.m., where he would like me to contact an individual he was talking to.”

2:17
Ontario court rules Doug Ford must turn over personal phone records

The retroactive changes — which exclude all records belonging to the premier and cabinet ministers from release — could kill the freedom of information appeal the government has twice lost.

Critics believe the change is designed to end that challenge and ensure the record of who the premier has spoken to remains permanently secret.

“We know that the premier doesn’t want to share his personal — what he considers his personal — cellphone records, even though he’s using personal devices to do government business,” NDP Leader Marit Stiles told reporters.

“The courts have decreed that he needs to release that information. And so rather than release that information, they are going to change the laws. What does that tell you about what this government is trying to hide and what’s at stake?”

Liberal MPP Stephanie Smyth said the changes were about reducing transparency.

“This isn’t about protecting Ontario. It’s about protecting Doug Ford,” she wrote in a statement.

“Ontarians are worried about hospital wait times, rising costs, and housing — but the Premier is only worried about protecting himself.”

At an unrelated event on Monday, Ford said he wanted people to judge his government on what it does, not how it makes decisions.

“Judge me, or judge our party, on decisions,” he said, “not on conversations that we have in a cabinet office or conversations that people trust that you are.”

2:13
Doug Ford loses transparency fight to block release of personal cell phone records

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The Ford government is poised to offer all home buyers a significant tax discount on newly built homes, Global News has learned, in a major expansion of a government program designed to breathe life into Ontario’s sluggish housing sector.

As part of his spring budget, Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy is expected to announce that the provincial portion of the harmonized sales tax will be removed for anyone buying a newly constructed home, rewriting a policy the government introduced just months ago.

The original version of the plan, introduced during the fall economic statement, allocated $470 million over three years to give first-time Ontario homebuyers a tax break on new homes.

Ontario’s pledge to waive its portion of the HST came shortly after a similar announcement by the federal government — allowing first-time homebuyers to save up to $130,000 on a new home under $1 million, and lower rebates for homes costing up to $1.5 million.

Only a few months after introducing the policy, however, the premier said it had failed to produce the pre-construction sales the province had hoped for —something Ford said he had warned would happen.

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“I have always been an advocate of getting rid of the HST for everyone,” Ford said in January.

“We did it for first-time homebuyers, but obviously that didn’t move the needle, which I predicted it wouldn’t move the needle. Let’s open it up to anyone who wants to buy a new home.”

But Bethlenfalvy, Ford said, has always been cautious of the costs.

“Thank you for being tight as skin on a grape when it comes to spending taxpayers’ money,” Ford recently said of his finance minister.

Development industry sources told Global News the government had indicated to them that waiving tax for all new homes could cost the treasury $2 billion, substantially more than the $470 million for limiting it to first-time homebuyers.

The additional cost would come at a time when the finance minister’s budget has ballooned to a record $236 billion, with a $13.4-billion deficit and a provincial debt that’s set to cross the half-a-trillion-dollar threshold in 2027.

At a recent pre-budget speech at the Empire Club, Bethlenfalvy warned that Ontario’s outlook is “uncertain” amid global instability and suggested the government needs to restrain spending.

“From a fiscal perspective, stability matters,” Bethlenfalvy said.

Still, the government’s efforts to build 1.5 million homes by 2031 have fallen flat — there were just 62,561 housing starts in 2025 — leading to calls for additional government intervention to stimulate the market.

The Ontario Home Builders Association argued that limiting the HST rebate to first-time homebuyers would impact only five per cent of the market and called for an “Ontario-led approach” to remove the sales tax off all new home purchases.

While the Ford government has been appealing to the federal government to broaden their HST exemption, the province is willing to go it alone.

“A functioning housing market is a competitiveness strategy that helps attract and keep construction jobs while boosting affordability and growing our economy,” Bethlenfalvy told the Empire Club.

The finance minister will table the budget on March 26.

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A Canadian taxpayer advocacy group is calling on the Ford government to “immediately backtrack” on controversial changes to transparency legislation it announced just before the weekend.

On Friday morning, Minister of Public and Business Service Delivery and Procurement Stephen Crawford unveiled plans to shield the premier, his cabinet ministers and their staff from freedom of information laws.

Crawford, who said the move was about modernizing outdated legislation, confirmed the plans would stop any records held by political staff and elected officials from being released under access to information laws.

Noah Jarvis, the Ontario director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, said the move was “absolutely outrageous” and would hurt the public’s right to know.

“Freedom of information laws are how taxpayers are able to hold politicians and bureaucrats accountable,” he said in a video posted to social media.

“If Ontario taxpayers are not able to access records from cabinet ministers and their offices, that means they have less ability to figure out how much they’re spending, how they’re wasting your taxpayers’ dollars.”

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The move has also been harshly criticized by Information and Privacy Commissioner Patricia Kosseim, who blasted the proposals as “shocking” and indicated she thought they had been brought in because a court ruled Premier Doug Ford would have to share details of his personal call log.

“By changing the law retroactively, the government’s message is plain: if oversight bodies get in the way, just change the rules,” she wrote in a statement.

Crawford said exempting texts and emails from ministers and their staff would allow them to communicate more freely, without fear of how the public could react.

“Any interactions of the executive council members amongst themselves will be confidential,” he said on Friday. “And I think that’s in the best interests of the people so that we can have candid conversations, important discussions without any potential blowback.”

Jarvis said the public deserved to be able to see how the politicians they elect and pay are making their decisions.

“At the end of the day, the government is meant to be working for you, not the other way around,” he said.

“Ford needs to immediately backtrack on this attempt to take an axe to transparency laws and to hide from Ontario taxpayers. What do they have to hide? Are they trying to hide certain emails, text messages? Are they trying to dodge accountability from Ontario taxpayers?”

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Ontario’s transparency watchdog says the Ford government’s planned overhaul of freedom of information laws is a “shocking” proposal designed to hide the premier’s cellphone records from the public.

New policy announced by the government on Friday morning will retroactively block the release of communications from the premier, government ministers, parliamentary assistants or their staff through access to information requests.

It’s a policy change the Information and Privacy Commission (IPC) suspects is designed to bail the government out of releasing vital documents following a legal defeat.

Since late 2022, Global News has been engaged in a battle with the government over Doug Ford’s personal call log, trying to access information on a device he uses to run the province.

Through the process, the government has admitted Ford uses his personal phone for government business, but argued it would be an invasion of his privacy to release it. Twice, that argument has been knocked back.

Toward the end of 2024, an adjudicator with the IPC sided with Global News and ordered Ford to hand over his records. The next year, a panel of three judges rejected the government’s request for a judicial review.

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Commissioner Patricia Kosseim said in a statement that it was “alarming” the government was rewriting the law after losing in court.

“The Government of Ontario is currently seeking leave to appeal a court ruling that unanimously upheld my office’s order to produce call logs from the Premier’s personal cellphone that relate to government business,” she said.

“By changing the law retroactively, the government’s message is plain: if oversight bodies get in the way, just change the rules.”

Under Ontario’s current framework, the public is entitled to request documents and communications from civil servants and politicians, with some elements redacted to protect independent decision making, advice to politicians and legal advice, among a myriad of other exemptions.

Once enacted, the new law will mean that records of the premier, cabinet ministers, parliamentary assistants and their offices would no longer be subject to freedom of information laws. Members of the public could still request records held by public servants in government ministries.

That would likely exclude Ford’s cellphone records from release permanently — including who the premier spoke to before deciding to remove land from the Greenbelt in 2022.

The commissioner said the new changes could destroy transparency.

“If records about government business can be shielded from scrutiny simply because they sit in a minister’s office, on a staffer’s device, or within a political account, public accountability is eviscerated,” she wrote.

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Questions are being raised about the Ford government’s timeline to shrink the number of conservation authorities in Ontario by 75 per cent, with local leaders still waiting to see details of the plan.

Minister of the Environment, Conservation and Parks Todd McCarthy confirmed this week he would amalgamate the province’s 36 conservation authorities into just nine, something he aims to achieve in the next year.

The province said in its news release it wanted to see a “clear and successful” transition to the new model by “early 2027.”

Tim Lanthier, the CAO of Grey Sauble Conservation Authority, said he and his colleagues were still waiting to see details of the government’s strategy, which he said could likely take more than a year.

“I would suggest that February 2027, as being proposed, is very ambitious,” he told Global News. “It’s our understanding from the media statements that the province has a plan. We’re yet to see this plan, though.”

Lanthier said he wasn’t in favour of the plan but would work to make it happen.

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“This isn’t what we’ve advocated for and certainly not what we wanted to see,” he said.

“We will work collaboratively with our partner conservation authorities to make it happen. But whether it can all happen by 2027 — or just the absolute bare bones — remains to be seen. Because there is a lot of work.”

McCarthy has pledged that the amalgamation won’t lead to net job losses and insists it is necessary to deal with “fragmentation,” bring efficiency to leadership and standardization to the work conservation authorities do.

“We had a problem with fragmentation and inconsistency,” the minister said. “We identified the solution to that problem. We listened after initially proposing seven, and we’ve arrived at nine.”

Critics argue that that is a fundamental misunderstanding of what conservation authorities were designed to do.

“What we’re seeing brought forward seems to ignore the reality that we have very different situations in every watershed,” Ontario NDP MPP Peter Tabuns told Global News.

“Putting them together into nine, blending together areas that have very substantial differences is not actually going to help the conservation authorities function properly. It will, in fact, lead to problems where local control isn’t there and understanding of and reflection of local needs won’t be taken into account in decision-making.”

Lanthier said amalgamation could hurt local representation on conservation authorities. While that may be less impactful to their core mandates of protecting drinking and source water, it could reduce the effectiveness of other services they provide.

“We also offer other programs like environmental education, environmental stewardship, watershed management in terms of watershed monitoring,” he explained.

“Some of those programs, because of changes made to the legislation over the last five years, are not considered mandatory anymore. They are implemented because it’s deemed to be important locally.”

McCarthy said his office received 14,000 messages and consultations about its decision to reduce the number of conservation authorities.

His spokesperson did not respond to questions asking if the majority of those comments were in favour of the amalgamation or not.

A housing law from the Progressive Conservative government a few years ago reduced the role of conservation authorities, including limiting the areas they can consider in development permissions, removing factors such as pollution and conservation of the land.

— with a file from The Canadian Press

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The Ford government is set to allow retailers across the province to open their doors to shoppers on Family Day and Victoria Day, Global News has learned, after the premier expressed frustration about major malls being closed on provincial holidays.

During the recent Family Day long weekend, Ford said he was inundated with calls from “so many people wanting to go to shopping malls” and questioned why major shopping centres — including Toronto’s Sherway Gardens and Yorkdale Mall — were closed.

At the time, Ford appeared unsure about whether he would change the law, but promised to consult with the Retail Council of Canada, along with retail giants such as Wal-Mart, Loblaw, Shoppers Drug Mart and Home Depot.

“I know it would add to our GDP,” Ford said on Feb. 17. “That would probably add close to a million working hours that people could pocket.”

It took less than a month for Ford’s musings to become reality.

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Global News has learned that, during an early morning cabinet meeting on Thursday, the government approved a plan to allow provincewide shopping on Family Day and Victoria Day.

While it’s unclear why the government settled on those two days, the province would have to amend the existing law to allow for the change.

Currently, the Retail Business Holiday Act forbids shopping on New Year’s Day, Good Friday, Victoria Day, Canada Day, Labour Day, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day and Easter Sunday.

Family Day isn’t enshrined in that law, but it is designated as a holiday in the Employment Standards Act, which means employees are entitled to enhanced wages.

Ford’s interest in changing the law appears to be driven by the Greater Toronto Area.

“I wanted to go to Home Depot … it was closed,” Ford confessed on Feb. 17.

That closure is largely a decision by a City of Toronto bylaw, which dictates that all retail across the city “must close” on statutory holidays.

The only exemptions are small grocery stores, pharmacies and art galleries, along with retailers that carry a “tourist area exemption,” including the Eaton Centre, the Bloor-Yorkville Business Improvement Area and the Distillery District.

Ford’s cabinet, Global News has learned, will allow for provincewide change, giving all retailers an exemption on the two public holidays.

Ford has stressed that even if the government changes the law, it would be “up to companies to decide.”

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Ontario’s education minister says he will keep school boards in the province under supervision for years if necessary and won’t feel pressure to hand them back to elected trustees until he is confident they’re being well-run.

Paul Calandra has put eight school boards under supervision over the past year, sidelining trustees at some of the province’s largest boards.

Both Toronto public and Catholic, as well as the two English-language boards in Peel Region, are now being run by provincial supervisors. The eight supervised boards represent some 750,000-plus students.

“Almost 40 per cent of the student population in Ontario is under the control of the Ministry of Education right now,” Calandra said. “That ostensibly is to ensure that classroom funding is maximized to lower down the temperature we’d seen in advance of supervision.”

Supervision is something that has concerned some in the education space, including parent groups and unions. An open letter sent to the Ford government asked for a clear plan on how boards would return to trustee-led governance.

Calandra, however, suggested he was in no hurry to reverse course.

“With respect to the boards that we have under supervision, they’re not going to be turned back until they’re on the right path, full stop,” he said. “If it takes us one year, two years, three years, 10 years — I don’t care.”

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Calandra has also mused over months about the future of trustees, pointing out he has the power to abolish English public school trustees if he chooses.

David Maston, president of the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario, said giving the provincial government control of day-to-day decisions at school boards is a mistake.

“Comments about potentially eliminating them altogether, concentrating decision-making power at Queen’s Park, should concern us all,” he said.

“These actions raise serious concerns about the minister acting without meaningful consultation from those directly involved: the families of students, educators and education workers.”

Calandra has pointed to a trip to Italy taken by trustees at one board and an excursion to the Toronto Blue Jays’ hotel by another board as examples of mismanagement from elected trustees.

David Lepofsky, a disability advocate and chair of the AODA Alliance, said it was a “false dilemma” to suggest trustees must exist in their current form or be abolished.

“Mend it, don’t end it,” he suggested.

Among Lepofsky’s concerns is the danger that eliminating trustees could reduce the options for parents of children with disabilities. He said supervision at the Toronto District School Board had hurt children with special educational needs.

“What we’ve seen from the point of view of kids with disabilities and special education needs is that after six or more months under their supervision, things have not gotten one bit better,” he said.

“In fact, things have gotten appreciably worse.”

While Calandra seemed to be moving full steam ahead with the removal of trustees a few months ago, Premier Doug Ford would not commit to the plan on Wednesday.

“I can’t confirm it right at this second, everything’s on the table,” he said. “What we want to do is focus in the classroom, what we don’t want to see is mismanagement.”

Calandra said he still planned to recommend changes.

“I haven’t given the premier my suggestions yet for reform -I’ll do that very soon,” he said. “A whole host of options for the premier and then to my cabinet colleagues.”

The lack of a decision so far is something Kathleen Woodcock, president of the Ontario Public School Board Association, hopes means the idea could be scrapped.

“I hope the premier has decided to listen to all of the education sector, saying this is not a path that really makes any sense for our students,” she said.

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The Ford government says it will give elementary school teachers access to $750 per year in classroom supplies, which they’ll be able to order directly from a new provincial website.

Beginning in September, teachers will be able to use the money to buy writing supplies, calculators, chalk, art, crafts and tissue, among other classroom supplies.

The government said it will offer direct support to teachers, who, Premier Doug Ford and Education Minister Paul Calandra both say, have been forced until now to spend their own money on supplies from dollar stores.

“We know that many teachers have been paying out of pocket for supplies. That isn’t fair for teachers or students,” Calandra said.

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“While school boards receive funding for classroom resources, we have not always seen those dollars consistently reach every classroom. That is why we are putting funds directly in the hands of teachers to ensure their classrooms are equipped to support student achievement.”

He said the funds would be in addition to the money boards currently receive.

David Mastin, president of the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario, suggested that spending accounts missed the mark.

“For years, educators have spent hundreds of dollars of their own money to ensure students have what they need. If the government is finally acknowledging this reality, it’s long overdue,” he said in a statement.

“The real issue that needs addressing is this government’s ongoing refusal to address the chronic underfunding that forces educators to subsidize classrooms out of their own pockets in the first place.”

The government said the new website will offer supplies for elementary teachers grade-by-grade, which will then be delivered directly to schools.

The province said it would consult with teachers to work out what supplies it needs to stock on the website.

Calandra said the current policy, which only targets elementary school teachers, was a “start” and he would be open to expanding it to secondary school teachers.

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It was early June when representatives of the Ford government’s home care agency penned an increasingly frustrated and urgent legal letter to one of its vendors.

Weeks after a ransomware attack, officials were still trying to work out how many Ontarians had been impacted.

“Just want to reiterate the urgency around the numbers,” a representative of Ontario Health atHome wrote in an email on June 9, 2025.

“We really need to understand our actual exposure (not the potential exposure). Anything you and your client can do to expedite and provide this information sooner rather than later would be appreciated.”

Two months earlier, the company — Ontario Medical Supply (OMS) — had informed Ontario Health atHome its systems had been breached.

The breach would turn out to be a ransomware attack which impacted some 200,000 home care patients in Ontario. A government report suggests OMS ultimately paid the ransom demanded to get access to its servers again.

Despite not knowing for weeks how many patients were impacted, the Ministry of Health did not reveal the cyberattack until an Ontario Liberal MPP sounded the alarm in late June 2025.

Before that, hundreds of pages of internal emails and reports, obtained by Global News using freedom of information laws, reveal a tense scramble to see what data had been compromised and what should be done.

The documents show ransomware likely accessed servers used by OMS without being noticed in mid-March 2025, remaining dormant for a month before it triggered its “payload” on April 13.

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When the malware was activated, it locked a “significant portion” of the company’s servers, demanding a payment to return access.

The day after the attack, OMS told Ontario Health atHome it had suffered a breach and was taking steps to address it. The messages suggest that, initially at least, the breach was not seen as a major risk.

At one point, a note from OMS said that, “based on the controls that are in place, we have assessed the risk to Ontario Health and provisional healthcare services as low.”

Days after being told about the attack, Ontario Health atHome started asking questions.

According to a letter from its lawyers, the agency requested details of the attack. OMS told them it would only answer if “questions were put in writing.”

For more than two weeks after the attack took place, it appears neither OMS nor Ontario Health atHome thought personal health records had been accessed. Then, in early May, OMS confirmed public health information “may have been exfiltrated.”

The first disclosure that patient information could have been involved came on May 6. It wasn’t until May 21, according to the letter and the provincial government, that OMS confirmed public health data was definitely taken.

Even after learning that patient data had been impacted, OMS appeared to remain comfortable that the situation was under control.

“We are confident that this threat has been contained and eradicated, and that we now have exceptional security safeguards in place, providing excellent visibility and protection,” an email from its CEO to Ontario Health atHome explained.

Officials at the agency pushed back, asking for specifics on how many patients had potentially had their data stolen and their identities, so they could be contacted.

“It is difficult to pinpoint exact patients, but we do know that files containing basic patient data would have been compromised,” OMS’ CEO wrote on May 23. “Our estimate is that the number impacted is 200,000. We don’t believe we will get to a more precise figure.”

The back-and-forth continued for weeks. From the moment the attack was disclosed, OMS had been kept out of Ontario Health atHome’s systems, as cybersecurity staff worked to see if it was safe to reconnect the vendor.

The emails obtained by Global News come from the government agency and chronicle its internal frustration with how OMS appeared to be handling the cyberattack. Snippets suggest the company was also struggling with Ontario Health atHome’s response.

On June 11, the CEO of OMS wrote to Ontario Health atHome to complain that his company had “provided all the necessary remedial work” after the ransomware attack, and not being able to integrate with the government’s systems was hurting patient care.

“Does the leadership of OHaH understand that your IT is requiring that we provide information on stockouts and similar notifications as a critical item to reconnection when we haven’t been able to provide this since April 13th?” the CEO wrote in an email.

The letter from Ontario Health atHome’s lawyers, sent two days after the reconnection complaint, said the agency still had no real idea of how many patients were impacted.

“To date, and despite multiple requests on the part of OHaH, OMS has failed to provide a breakdown of the ‘approximately 200,000′ individuals affected by the Incident, including the number of OHaH patients impacted, and/or any other details about the specific personal information and/or (personal health information) that has been compromised,” an extract read.

The breach was revealed two weeks later by Ontario Liberal MPP Adil Shamji.

To date, the government has still not offered a more detailed figure than 200,000 patients. The value of the ransom also remains unknown.

OMS did not respond to questions ahead of this story, while the Ministry of Health did not address Global News’ questions in a statement.

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The Ford government will table its annual budget at the end of March, a financial document the premier has promised will not feature cuts.

During an appearance at the Empire Club in Toronto, Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy revealed he would publish the budget on Thursday, March 26.

The budget confirms the government’s spending plans for the year ahead, along with economic indicators ranging from growth to new housing or spending on vices like alcohol.

Bethlenfalvy has recently vocally complained about how much money Ontario is pouring into the health-care sector, the single largest line in its operating plan, calling it “unsustainable” at an event in Mississauga.

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“We’re in unprecedented territory in terms of the concerns of people. People are scared, they’re worried, they are concerned,” Bethlenfalvy previously said of the current geopolitical and economic climate fuelled, in part, by U.S. President Donald Trump.

At the same time, the finance minister warned that the province was facing a “big headwind, on top of the uncertainty” that threatens to squeeze Ontario even further.

“The economic environment is slowing down, there’s just no question,” the minister said. “We’re growing at the slowest rate we’ve grown post-COVID.”

Ford, however, promised that those pressures wouldn’t result in spending cuts when the budget is unveiled in a few weeks.

“I’ll tell you right now: no, there won’t be,” he said Tuesday when asked about cuts.

“My finance minister is the best finance minister I’ve ever seen. He’s a proven fiscal manager with taxpayers’ money.”

Ford acknowledged that the growth in health-care spending was on his mind, but said he didn’t plan to cut back.

“And yes, when you see the amount that we’re investing into health care, it’s concerning,” he added. “He’s doing his job. But we’re going to continue to invest, continue to increase the funding.”

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