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.
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“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.
Reporter if you’re reading this there is an IPC case about this exact topic. I am an IT Director for an Ontario Municipality. They can retrieve the teams messages from backups. Unless they are purging backups within 30 days, they have the info. Guaranteed. It’s stored in Exchange email content, so if they’re backing up email, the records exist beyond the 30 days retention. All municipalities do this, delete within 30-90 days. But, it’s not really gone.
I guarantee you they can be retrieved beyond 30 days.
Doug Ford is our Trump, and the only thing more anti-Canadian the repulsive avoidance of accountability by his government is the seemly complicit apathy of Ontario voters.
VOTE THE CRIMINALS OUT
The City of Toronto has a similar data retention policy on Teams (and has done so for about one year).
It’s disturbing.
The Federals Liberals did do this in early 2025 at the worst absolute time. Shuttered parliament to save themselves.
Gov : They’re deleting data, refusing court orders, bypassing debates and committees and lastly, keeping the Legislature closed. If the Liberals or NDP in Ontario did this, you would be screaming from the rooftops. There are standards and ALL the parties should be adhering to them, period, full stop. With Conservatives it’s more like these are the laws that apply to everyone but us.
This certainly sounds like the liberal way of doing gov’t business.
This is a non-story. Automatic deletion is standard practice.
The Libs hired a private IT guy to sneak in at night and delete historic emails and records about the power plant closures.
A random chat between two colleagues is not on the same level.
Wasn’t someone in the previous (McGuinty Liberal) government convicted and jailed for deleting records? Why is now okay for the Conservatives to automatically delete records? Corruption, deflection, and no accountability with Ford and his government. Sounds as if Ontario has it’s own mini Trump.
Vinny, va fangulo
No surprise here from Doug Trump. This is just more corruption. No FOI, no digital trail. It only means one thing. So much for boycotting US products. Why is our government on MS Teams? Our provinces data is sitting in a US cloud.
More boot licking from anonymous. This is down right wrong and they attack the wrong side. This goes against democracy. Dictator Ford running the show
Last I checked Glover is not his party’s spokesperson. Maybe he can focus on the issues of his riding, and all the constituents who need his attention to issues effecting them.