Internal messages sent within the Ontario government on Microsoft Teams are permanently deleted after 30 days, according to policy documents, raising questions about how the province went about pausing transparency requests earlier this year.
In May, weeks after the Ford government narrowed the scope of transparency laws in Ontario to exclude the premier, his cabinet and their staff, civil servants in charge of processing freedom of information requests were told to put down their pens.
For more than a week, the work of disclosing reports, records and messages to the public was totally frozen so the Ford government could write guidance for how to handle the changes it had rushed through in the budget.
The controversial pause wasn’t announced publicly or even sent through an internal memo or government-wide email.
Instead, the direction was communicated in a Microsoft Teams group chat.
Now, Global News can confirm Microsoft Teams conversations across the Ford government are only kept for 30 days before they’re automatically scrubbed.
Government policies, obtained using freedom of information laws, reveal the only way to keep Teams conversations longer than a month is a screenshot or copying them into a text document.
“Microsoft Teams chat messages are automatically deleted after 30 calendar days,” one policy, called “Record guidance for Microsoft Teams,” explains.
“After 30 calendar days, Teams chat messages cannot be retrieved.”
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Ontario NDP MPP Chris Glover suggested the government had deliberately used the Microsoft messaging platform to arrange the freedom of information pause in the hopes it wouldn’t be made public.
“I think it creates the opportunity for records to disappear,” he said.
“You look at the track record of this government, it’s absolutely abysmal. They have been trying to hide records in every possible way that they can for the last eight years. Ford even inserted into the budget bill legislation that gutted the Freedom of Information Act so that he could retroactively hide his phone records.”
Ontario Liberal interim leader John Fraser said the routine deletion of messages sent by political staff and civil servants was a sign of a culture of secrecy.
“This government is committed to secrecy,” he said. “It’s a government that’s got a criminal investigation going on. The integrity commissioner’s looking into the actions of Minister (David) Piccini and skills development. It is what this government is all about: let’s just see what we can get away with.”
The Ministry of Public and Business Service Delivery did not respond to questions from Global News ahead of publication. In a previous statement, a spokesperson defended the use of Teams to communicate the FOI pause.
“Microsoft Teams is an approved enterprise collaboration platform and is used across ministries. The platform meets the Ontario Public Service’s information management and security requirements,” they wrote.
“The government will continue to uphold the public’s right of access to records and ensure that we meet the highest standards in implementing the amendments to FIPPA.”
But internally, when the freedom of information pause was communicated through Microsoft Teams, some of the messages suggest civil servants were uncomfortable with the informal, loosely recorded nature of the order.
The messages, previously obtained by Global News, show that the lack of official direction caused immediate concern. Several senior civil servants asked to be given the order to pause their work in an email.
“Can you please provide this direction in an email,” one civil servant requested.
The request was echoed by their colleagues.
“Yes, I need this in writing to stop mine or my team’s work,” one wrote.
Yet another repeated the plea.
“This will be critical for us since we have a decentralized approach to processing requests,” they said.
The requests were flatly denied.
“There won’t be anything coming in email,” civil servants were told.
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