Ontario’s Information and Privacy Commissioner says government ministries are increasingly ignoring its legally binding orders to release records, and the office has no way to force them to comply, according to two separate reports this week from CP24 and Global News.
“Recently, our office has been seeing an increase in non-compliance with our orders from certain institutions compared to historic trends,” an IPC spokesperson said, according to Global News. The commissioner’s office said it is now “intervening directly” with the Ministry of the Solicitor General over what it called a recent pattern of ignored orders.
The clearest example involves the Ontario Provincial Police. Global News filed a freedom of information request nearly two years ago seeking details on OPP detachment expansion plans in northern Ontario. The IPC ordered the ministry in early September to issue a decision on the request. The ministry missed that deadline entirely, and only after Global News asked why did privacy officials acknowledge the file had “slipped through the cracks.” Solicitor General Michael Kerzner’s issues director contacted civil servants about the file’s status once the media questions came in, and Kerzner told reporters, “No, no, but we’ll look into the matter.”
The same ministry drew an IPC rebuke in a separate 2023 case, when it refused to hand over notes from Premier Doug Ford’s drivers to an IPC adjudicator as ordered, a delay the commission itself called “inordinate.” The adjudicator eventually had to view the records in person rather than receive copies.
CP24 reported a parallel breakdown at the Ministry of Labour, where nine freedom of information requests filed by CTV News in September 2025 about the province’s Skills Development Fund went unanswered past an Aug. 21 deadline. The Trillium, a Queen’s Park news outlet, said it obtained a legal IPC order in July directing the ministry to respond after paying $4,000 in processing fees, and the ministry ignored that order too. CTV News has reported that more than $100 million in Skills Development Fund grants can be traced to lobbyists connected to Ford, including money to a company linked to the premier’s family dentist and a $10 million grant for worker training at an adult entertainment venue.
What connects these cases is not just delay but leverage. Ontario’s commissioner, unlike British Columbia’s, has no statutory power to enforce its own orders in court. When a ministry simply does not comply, the watchdog’s only recourse is to say so publicly, which is what triggered this week’s reports. The IPC has asked the government for years to give it enforcement teeth, without success.
The pattern also follows changes canadanewsmedia.ca reported on in April, when the Ford government passed legislation narrowing what records fall under freedom of information law in the first place. Taken together, a watchdog with a shrinking legal mandate is now also reporting that ministries are ignoring the mandate it still has, at the same time the IPC is separately urging the province to abandon a further overhaul of FOI rules before it takes effect.
For Ontarians trying to see how the Skills Development Fund, policing budgets or the premier’s own office operate, the practical effect is the same whether the barrier is a narrower law or a missed deadline: fewer answers, and less way to make ministries give them.
Via CP24 and Global News. Read the original reporting: CP24 and Global News.
