Critics say Ford is ‘flooding the zone’ to distract from transparency controversy

Critics in Ontario say a flurry of government announcements on justice, alcohol and roads is designed to distract from sweeping changes the Progressive Conservatives are planning to apply to the province’s transparency laws.

On Friday morning, Minister of Public and Business Service Delivery and Procurement Stephen Crawford announced the government would clamp down on freedom of information laws, retroactively exempting himself, Premier Doug Ford and his cabinet from disclosing their records.

The changes will exclude emails from cabinet ministers and their staff, meaning they won’t be subject to scrutiny. It would likely nullify a court order for Ford to release records from his personal phone, which he says he calls CEOs, politicians and advocates on.

Since that announcement, news has rained down from Queen’s Park.

Late on Friday afternoon, Ford posted a pre-recorded video on social media, saying his government would seek an injunction to ban the Al-Quds Day rally in downtown Toronto.

The video was posted before lawyers filed paperwork with the courts. The government didn’t have its case heard until three hours before the event — which happens every year — was due to take place. A judge threw out the request, saying the province had failed to meet the legal threshold.

Later on Friday, the Ford government also made good on the premier’s promise to let malls open for shopping on both the Family Day and Victoria Day long weekends.

Then, over the weekend, Ontario’s attorney general wrote a letter to the federal government asking it to consider legalizing pepper spray in self-defence. Monday saw Ford announce a legally complicated plan to livestream bail hearings.

On Tuesday morning, the Ministry of Transportation said it would begin allowing vehicles without passengers to use high-occupancy vehicle lanes. Hours after that, the government unveiled a broadening of its tailgating rules, which won’t come into effect until September.

“It’s a distraction — flood the zone, put out as many stories as you can so you’re not talking about the premier trying to hide from accountability,” Ontario Liberal MPP John Fraser said.

Between the announcements, Ford has also taken questions about the transparency changes. On Tuesday, he appeared to acknowledge the sweeping changes were motivated by a desire to keep his call logs secret.

Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles said the volume of announcements only underscored her interest in what calls or messages could have motivated the premier to prepare a law to cancel out a legal defeat.

“There has to be something really significant for the premier to be dropping so many of these predictable announcements,” she told reporters. “My goodness, it’s booze, it’s pepper spray, anything to distract from the fact he is losing in court and he doesn’t want anybody to be able to access his cellphone records.”

Fraser said the announcements the Ford government has made since unveiling its freedom of information law changes are easy to implement.

“You’ll notice one other thing,” he said. “The stuff he does (want to talk about), like you can bring your own booze or you can drive in this lane, it’s all easy. Stroke of a pen stuff. He can’t do the hard stuff. He can’t make class sizes smaller because he’s not interested in that, or finding people a family doctor, because he’s not really interested in doing that. It’s a game to hide from accountability.”

Ford is scheduled to hold another news conference out of Toronto on Wednesday.

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