Friday the 13th, 2026 – A transparency horror show

Elected officials hacking and slashing access and privacy to act in the cover of darkness.

Victoria March 13, 2026 – The first few months of 2026 have been a kind of slow-motion horror movie for freedom of information and the public’s right to know in Canada.

On February 26, the BC Government introduced Bill 9, the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Amendment Act. The Act, touted as a much-needed update to the law that will improve efficiency and modernize digital service delivery, further tilts the balance of power between requesters and public bodies. Under Bill 9, the heads of public bodies will have the authority to decide, in their opinion, what constitutes “enough detail” and “reasonable amount of time” when determining whether a freedom of information (FOI) request is valid. They also have expanded grounds to call for an FOI request to be dismissed. Critics of the bill spent hours condemning this erosion of transparency in the Legislature over the last week.

On March 12, the federal Liberals, Conservatives, and NDP set aside their differences to pass Bill C-4, An Act respecting certain affordability measures for Canadians and another measure. The ‘other measure’, Part 4 of the bill, essentially allows federal political parties to retroactively exempt themselves from the privacy rules that govern every other type of entity – public bodies, private corporations, nonprofits – in Canada. In an uncommon display of unity, the elected members of these parties have passed a law that will ensure that they get to set their own rules when it comes to the collection, use, and disclosure of our personal information. To make it absolutely clear what they think about privacy, they made this law retroactive to 2000, and they ensured that it does not recognize any individual’s right to request access to their own personal information held by a federal political party.

On Friday, the 13th of March, Ontario’s Minister of Public and Business Service Delivery and Procurement, Stephen Crawford, held a news conference to announce a set of planned (and retroactive) changes to Ontario’s Freedom of Information laws. The main thrust of this announcement is that Doug Ford’s government – the same government that has been investigated for egregious lack of transparency in its dealings with the Ontario Greenbelt and with its use of private cell phones to avoid leaving a record of its dealings – has decided to carve the Premier and Cabinet members out of the their Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA). The rationale for this seems clear: People are tenaciously demanding accountability from their government via public records laws, and this is creating political problems for the Premier. FOI laws, often touted as ‘shining a light’ on the workings of public bodies, can be inconvenient for governments. The Ontario announcement, fitting the horror movie theme of Friday the 13th, addresses this by turning off the lights.

What are we to make of this unfolding season of opacity?

Three points stand out.

First, it is important to note that all of these moves, each of which objectively erodes the public’s right to know, have been described by their proponents as principled and pragmatic steps to ‘modernize’ law. There is a common vocabulary of efficiency, modernization, and commitments to transparency that appears in press releases and Hansard records. In all cases, this rhetoric hides the demonstrable fact that these laws diminish the public’s right to know and grant additional powers of secrecy and selective transparency to governments.

Second, it is important to note that the governments that are eroding our right to know represent a cross-section of the Canadian political spectrum. The federal bill C-4 that guts our political privacy rights was introduced by Mark Carney’s Liberals, but supported by Pierre’s Poilievre’s Conservatives, and NDP. They all know that they have a vested interest in being able to collect and use our information without strong legal regulations or oversight. The federal Green Party has been the lone voice in the wilderness calling out the blatant flaws and vested interests at play. The erosion of privacy rights under BC’s Bill 9 is being driven by David Eby’s NDP Government, a party that has previously touted the importance of transparency and accountability. Ontario’s Conservative Government, always ready to denounce unresponsive bureaucracy and claim to champion the interests of the average citizen, is seeking to shield its own bureaucracy and strip away the average citizen’s information rights.

Third, these moves really matter. In keeping with the theme of an unfolding horror, they represent the death of transparency by a thousand cuts. No Canadian government – provincial or federal – will campaign on a full-scale repeal of our freedom of information and privacy laws. One cannot be electorally successful in a democracy while openly opposing transparency as a concept after all. But one can be electorally successful while slowly cutting away at the right to know, trimming a bit here and there, bleeding it quietly and underfunding it while supporting it rhetorically. A single bill, policy, or regulation can dim the lights of transparency just a bit without raising the alarm.

If we step back and look at the pattern, though, we can see that things are getting darker.

Horror movies generally follow common tropes and predictable arcs. At some point in the story – typically later than we would hope, and after too much damage has been done – the protagonists realize what is really going on and organize a desperate effort to turn the tide.

This is what we need at this moment. Our transparency rights are being eroded right now, all around us. It is not too late to turn the tide, but doing so will require collective action and urgency.