TheGovernment of Ontario (French:Gouvernement de l'Ontario), or more formally,His Majesty's Government of Ontario (French:Gouvernement de l’Ontario de Sa Majesté) is thesubnationalgovernment in theCanadian province ofOntario responsible for the administration of matters within provincial jurisdiction, as assigned by theConstitution Act, 1867. On matters that are within provincial justification, the Government of Ontario exercises its authorities independently and is not subject to restrain by the federal government.
Depending context, the termGovernment of Ontario in day-to-day communication usually refers specifically to one of the following:
The OntarioPublic Service, the functional workforce of more than 60,000 non-partisan civil servants in various ministries and agencies responsible for the execution of the policy decisions of the cabinet and for the delivery of programs and services that of public interest. The entire organizationcorporately brands itself as theGovernment of Ontario[1]
Queen's Park, the moniker commonly used to refer to theLegislative Assembly of Ontario, Ontario'sparliament, due to its location in said park. Members of the executive council are drawn from the elected members of this legislative body, and the Premier must command the support of the majority of its elected members on an ongoing basis to remain in office.
As aWestminster-styleparliamentarydemocracy, the Ontario Government draws its formal legal authority from the constitutional construct of theMonarchy in Ontario, or theCrown in Right of Ontario, in which the institutions of government act under King Charles III, as the monarch of Canada is also the King in Right of Ontario. As a Commonwealth realm, the Canadian monarch isshared with 14 other independent countries within theCommonwealth of Nations.[7] Within Canada, the monarch exercises power individually on behalf of thefederal government, and each of the 10 provinces.
The powers of the Crown are vested in the monarch and are exercised in the name of theLieutenant Governor of Ontario, who is appointed by thegovernor general, on the advice of theprime minister of Canada.[11] Formally speaking, executive power is vested in the Crown and exercised "in-Council", meaning the premier and ministers forming the executivecouncil advise the lieutenant governor in exercising theroyal prerogative and grantingroyal assent. In reality, the lieutenant governor can be appropriately described as the ceremonial figure head of the government. TheConstitution Act, 1867 requires executive power to be exercised only "by and with the Advice of the Executive Council"[12] and Westminster convention dictates that theadvice of the executive commanding the confidence of parliament, in this case the elected Legislative Assembly on Ontario, is binding on the crown. The lieutenant governor may only refuse advice if the executive or the premier does not clearly command such confidence, likely in a scenario of a constitutional crisis.
The executive government - premier and the executive council
The termGovernment of Ontario, in the context of the executive leadership of the provincial administration, refers to thePremier on Ontario, as determine through theelectoral process, and the cabinet they select and head. Currently, the government is led byProgressive Conservative PremierDoug Ford, who received his first electoral mandate and assumed the Ontario premiership inJune 2018, and was most recently reelected in February 2025.
The executive government, with electoral mandate, directs thenon-partisan Ontario Public Service, a workforce of more than 60,000 that staffs the numerous provincial departments, agencies. and crown corporations and perform the day-to-day operation and activities of the Government of Ontario
In Canada, the Cabinet (French:Conseil des ministres,lit. 'council of ministers') of provincial and territorial governments are known as an Executive Council (French:Conseil exécutif).
Doug Ford and his Cabinet were sworn in by Lieutenant GovernorElizabeth Dowdeswell on June 29, 2018, following the2018 general election. Ford conducted six major cabinet shuffles (with substantial numbers of ministers changing roles) since 2018 and 7 minor adjustments (triggered by resignations and impacted small numbers of ministers). The cabinet has numbered at 37 members since August 2024, the largest ever cabinet in Ontario history. It currently consists of the following ministers.[14]
(Per Ministry of Intergovernmental Affairs'Ontario order of precedence, members of the council are to be ordered "in accordance with the precedence document issued by the Cabinet Office", but no such documents is currently made public. Previous version of the document follow ordering similar to that in the Table of Precedence of Canada, primarily by the date a member first joined council, followed by the date of their first election to the legislature. This table is ordered as such.)
The Government of Ontario employs 63,000+ public servants in its non-partisan workforce called the Ontario Public Service (OPS).[15] The OPS helps the government design and deliver policies and programs. The head of the OPS is the Secretary of Cabinet and each ministry in the OPS has a Deputy Minister. The OPS public servants work in areas like administration, communications, data analytics, finance, information technology, law, policy, program development, service delivery, science and research.[16]
Public servants who are paid $100,000 or more are subject to thePublic Sector Salary Disclosure Act.[19] This list is colloquially known as thesunshine list.
^Claude Bouchard (16 February 2016)."Jugement No. 200-17-018455-139"(PDF) (in French). Cour supérieure du Québec. p. 16.Archived(PDF) from the original on 31 May 2020. Retrieved17 February 2016 – viaLe Devoir.
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