Ontario Premier Doug Ford confirmed that his chief of staff, Patrick Sackville, has used private email for government businesses but defended his top aide amid calls for his resignation.
A Global News investigation, ‘Government by Gmail,’ uncovered Sackville’s extensive use of a private email address to conduct government work, including sharing confidential provincial documents and legislation and facilitating political discussions on those files before they were eventually introduced in the Ontario legislature.
On Thursday, after persistent calls to fire his chief of staff over the use of non-government email for government work, Ford broke his silence and defended Sackville.
“As for Patrick Sackville, as far as I’m concerned, he didn’t do anything wrong,” Ford told reporters during an unrelated news conference.
“Everything that was on the private side was also on the public, government side,” Ford said, adding that civil servants and privacy officials “have access to anything they want.”
Ford’s admission that his top staffer uses a private email address for government work stands in stark contrast to what the premier said one week earlier when asked about his expectations of staff conduct.
“They shouldn’t, plain and simple,” Ford said on May 24. “They should be using government-issued emails, it’s simple as that.”
Wider use of private email
Emails viewed by Global News also point to signs of wider use of private email to conduct government-related work.
Aside from Sackville, Global News has viewed examples of other senior staff in the premier’s office also relying on private email addresses to share government-related material.
Multiple sources also described an email Sackville sent to all chiefs of staff in 2023 highlighting code-of-conduct rules and reminding them to avoid potential conflicts of interest by declining free tickets to events.
The email was sent from Sackville’s Gmail address to the private email addresses of the chiefs of staff who report to him.
As a result of the investigation, the premier’s office acknowledged that private platforms, such as Google Docs, are used to “support collaboration on materials or for political discussions” but stressed that provincial laws aren’t being broken.
“These materials have corresponding records on government networks and decisions or direction that inform government business are always provided through government networks, through government email and during official government briefings,” a spokesperson for the premier’s office said in a statement.
While it’s unclear how diligently Sackville and other members of the premier’s office repeat their private conversations on their government email, Global News has encountered access to information issues with Sackville’s documents.
Freedom of Information Act requests – which apply to private email addresses and private cellphones – for Sackville’s Gmail outbox returned zero results.
Meanwhile, Sackville appeared to omit text messages sent to Metrolinx CEO Phil Verster, during a separate disclosure request, despite Verster providing the conversation from his side.
Comparison to Kaleed Rasheed
On Wednesday, NDP Leader Marit Stiles made comparisons between Sackville and MPP Kaleed Rasheed, who resigned from Ford’s cabinet and the Ontario Progressive Conservative caucus in late 2023 after allegedly giving inconsistent testimony to Ontario’s integrity commissioner.
Rasheed continues to sit as an Independent MPP after the integrity commissioner declined to reinvestigate his case, citing the ongoing RCMP investigation into the Ford government’s handling of the Greenbelt policy.
“I want to remind the government that their former minister was forced to resign when it was revealed that he lied under oath to the integrity commissioner,” Stiles charged in the legislature.
Stiles has repeatedly suggested that Sackville also “misled” the integrity commissioner when he talked about his use of private email for government business.
Sackville told the commissioner in January that he “do(es) not conduct government business on (his) personal e-mail,” which the NDP claims was inconsistent with the revelations resulting from the Global News investigation.
On Thursday, Ford was asked about the difference in treatment between Sackville and Rasheed.
“With Kaleed Rasheed, he has to wait for the investigation to move forward,” Ford said. “If everything’s clear I look forward to having him back.”
The NDP said voters should be “disturbed” by Ford’s justification of his “top staffer using private email to hide shady dealings.”