Ontario’s Bill 97 threatens government accountability and privacy

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) is raising serious concerns over Ontario Bill 97, the Plan to Protect Ontario Act (Budget Measures), warning that it would significantly erode Ontario’s information rights framework at a time when privacy and government transparency are already under significant pressure.

Bill 97 would carve out broad categories of government records from Ontario’s access to information laws. Some of the proposed exceptions will even apply retroactively, allowing the government to avoid existing information access orders and court decisions.

The right to obtain information on issues of public importance is constitutionally protected and a cornerstone of democracy. It underpins the principle that governments must be transparent and accountable to the public.

In practice, this right to access information—and the legal frameworks that support it—allow journalists, researchers and oversight organizations to expose wrongdoing and poor governance.

Other proposed changes would strip away essential public tools used to verify whether the government is meeting its privacy and cybersecurity requirements and insulate government decision-making from independent scrutiny by Ontario’s privacy regulator.

Tamir Israel, Director of CCLA’s Privacy, Surveillance and Technology Program, made the following statement:

“Bill 97 represents a significant rollback of Ontario’s regime for government transparency and privacy. Despite its name, the only people that the “Plan to Protect Ontario Act” will protect are government officials attempting to dodge public accountability for their decision-making processes. Its erosion of privacy and cybersecurity scrutiny exposes the personal information of everyone in Ontario to risk of abuse.”

Background

Ontario’s right to information regime—set out in the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA) and its municipal counterpart, MFIPPA—gives the public a legal right to obtain government records and protects personal information. These laws are overseen by the independent Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario.

Bill 97 will undermine this legal right to obtain government records as well as personal privacy protections in this regime.

Blocking Access to Ministeral & Policial Staff Records

One of the most troubling elements of Bill 97 is its proposal to exclude all records held by the Premier, cabinet ministers, elected officials, and their political staff from access to information laws.

The Ontario government has suggested that removing these categories of records from access-to-information laws is standard practice across Canada, but that characterization is misleading. While it is reasonable to protect genuinely personal, confidential, or constituency-related information, FIPPA already contains provisions that address those concerns without broadly restricting access.

Nor are the proposed exceptions limited in any way to records that would impact on constituency related activity or the privacy of third parties. The exceptions are sweeping in nature—ministers and their staff will not be exempted from disclosing any record at all under their custody.

Ontario is also applying its exclusion of ministerial records retroactively, meaning that existing freedom of information requests, disclosure orders and even court decisions will be invalidated and government records that were already subject to disclosure will avoid public scrutiny.

As the Ontario Information and Privacy Commissioner noted in her assessment of the changes, these reforms are not about protecting information of constituents but about evading public accountability.

Bill 97 also introduces changes that would undermine privacy and limit scrutiny of government technology use.

Allowing public officials keep digital documents they no longer need

Another amendment would allow public officials to take their emails, electronic documents, instant messages and more with them when they change government roles. This proposal not only undermines privacy by granting government officials access to information they no longer need for their job, but also significantly undermines access to information.

Freedom of information requests are typically directed at specific departments, who then search for responsive records under their control. Allowing government officials to take department records with them when they depart takes those records outside of the department’s control, effectively hiding these documents from right to information searches directed at that department.

Shielding companies with access to student information from scrutiny

One troubling amendment would allow the government to hide what private companies have been granted access to personal information of Ontario students when responding to records requests.

Rapid and careless adoption of EdTech platforms has exposed the sensitive personal information of millions of students in Canada and around the world to severe privacy harms. The ability to know what companies are being granted access to our students’ personal information is critical to assessing the attendant risks to privacy and cybersecurity, as well as to more broadly assessing the fairness of government-adopted AI tools being applied to our students.

Exempting government cybersecurity evaluations from disclosure

Yet another amendment would categorically exempt public sector cybersecurity evaluations from public disclosure requirements. While details that could compromise security might be legitimately withheld, this proposed exemption applies to evaluations that pose no threat to cybersecurity at all.

For example, in the wake of a security breach, plans documenting the government’s failure to adopt critical safeguards would be exempted even if the security shortcomings they outline were addressed years ago. The end result would be a loss of accountability and a reduction in incentives to adopt more robust approaches to cybersecurity.

Less oversight & transparency of government privacy

A final set of amendments would shield government information-sharing from privacy commissioner oversight and end the Ontario government’s obligation to publish details regarding what types of personal information the government is handling and why.

Collectively, these measures would create serious gaps in Ontario’s privacy and public accountability framework. They would make it harder for the public to understand how decisions are made, how personal information is used, and whether the government is meeting its obligations to protect the people of Ontario.

The CCLA urges the Ontario government to withdraw these harmful provisions and uphold the principles of openness, accountability and privacy that are essential to a healthy democracy.