Official government documents written and saved in Google Docs are no longer covered by Ontario’s freedom of information laws, the province has decreed, as its transparency clampdown continues to roll out.
Until the beginning of May, Global News was engaged in an appeal to get access to nine documents that were created by staff in Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s office but stored in Google’s cloud service instead of secure government folders.
Now, in the wake of a major overhaul to the province’s transparency laws, which excludes all of the premier’s cabinet ministers and political staff from transparency requests, the appeal looks set to be cancelled.
“As of April 24, 2026, amendments to the Act came into force that exclude certain categories of records from its application. These amendments were enacted through Bill 97, the Plan to Protect Ontario Act (Budget Measures), 2026,” a letter from Ontario’s cabinet office reads.
“We have reviewed your requests and determined the records you seek fall within the exclusion under the Act relating to records held by ministers, parliamentary assistants, and their offices. As a result, these records are excluded from the scope of the Act and are not subject to access rights.”
The letter is an increasingly common message that is being sent to journalists, lawyers, advocates and members of the public who have used the freedom of information system to request documents from the government.
“This government is doing everything in secret,” Ontario Liberal interim leader John Fraser said. “And why are you doing everything in secret? Because you don’t want people to know, because you’re breaking the rules.”
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A spokesperson for the premier’s office insisted official records have also been kept.
“The records subject to this appeal were captured and reflected in official government documents,” they wrote in a statement.
The documents Global News had sought through the appeal were draft policies, stakeholder feedback, a policy rollout plan and remarks prepared for Ford to deliver to his cabinet in 2023.
They appear to have been drawn up or circulated using unsecured Google services instead of official systems, despite the fact that the government argued they are sensitive and include details of cabinet meetings.
The use of Google documents and email instead of official, secure systems goes back years in the Ford government and was a key concern raised by the auditor general during the Greenbelt scandal.
The auditor general found staff had regularly used personal emails and devices to communicate over the land swap.
Meanwhile, Premier Doug Ford uses his personal phone for government-related calls and is currently fighting a ruling by an Ontario court that he must release those records.
Ford’s chief of staff, Patrick Sackville, has also relied on his personal email account and phone to conduct government business. In 2024, Global News reported how Sackville regularly shared documents using his personal Gmail account.
One of the auditor general’s recommendations after the Greenbelt scandal was for all staff to sign attestations pledging not to use personal devices or accounts.
Those attestations, which were verified and signed off by Sackville when he was Ford’s chief of staff, are still being completed, the premier’s office said.
The Information and Privacy Commissioner, however, has said the government’s new freedom of information rules significantly increase the risk of people using personal devices for government work.
The new rules exclude — rather than exempt — government staff from privacy and transparency laws, meaning civil servants won’t have oversight of whether or not staff are using work or personal accounts.
“Allowing them to conduct government-related business on their personal email accounts and devices significantly increases the risk of privacy breaches and cyberattacks,” the commissioner previously wrote in a statement.
“These risks are further amplified when they keep these personal email accounts and devices after they leave government.”
The government has insisted that, even if those records won’t be available through freedom of information requests, the integrity commissioner and auditor general will still have access.
On Tuesday, Ontario’s auditor general said she’d considered the issue, but offered no details of how it could affect future audits from her office if more work moves to personal accounts.
“It’s something I’ve talked to the privacy commissioner about because she has done a public statement on the changes to FIPPA and the fact doing government business on a personal device … is not keeping a government record,” she said.
“The laws for privacy and for record retention is if you’re doing government business on a device that that record be retained.”
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