OTTAWA—The Conservative government is telling public servants to delete emails with no “business value,” opening the door to the destruction of potentially valuable records, say critics.
Employees must still preserve information as required by law, a government spokeswoman says, but instructions obtained by the Star show that employees were being told to delete some reference materials related to their work, including memos and copies of departmental documents.
Several departments have issued the instructions in recent weeks to delete records as part of a new two-gigabyte limit imposed on email inboxes for all federal employees based on a new standard , introduced by the secretariat of Treasury Board President Tony Clement .
“Clean up your mailbox and delete everything of no business value,” said a recent message sent to Environment Canada employees this summer.
The Environment Canada message included a poster listing different categories of what could be deleted and what should be preserved.
Documents “approved by your manager” were among the records that the department told employees to save. But some business-related emails fell into a “transitory” category that also includes “messages from your friends” or an “invitation to a party.”
The Environment Canada poster described these as “transitory reference” materials — which could include memorandums, copies of government reports, or reference material for subsequent work. The poster, which identified memos with an image of a paper airplane, showed these types of “transitory” documents going into a trash can.
The NDP’s access to information critic, MP Charlie Angus (Timmins-James Bay) , slammed the instructions, warning that they might erase evidence of political interference or mistakes by managers prior to decisions on federal policies.
“We’ve seen many times where draft reports may contain very vital political information that could be changed, either through political interference or an attempt to whitewash an issue,” Angus said in an interview.
“I have great faith in Canada’s civil service, but I don’t have faith in the embedded political officers who are now operating throughout these departments to protect the rear ends of the ministers.”
The instructions could also lead to the elimination of records, including personal correspondence, that would otherwise be available to the public under the Access to Information Act .
A spokesman for Environment Canada told the Star that its employees were responsible for retaining all information of “business value.”
Environment Canada also told its employees in its internal message that they could take a 60-minute online course, offered by the Canada School of Public Service — a government-owned training school for civil servants — for guidance on what to preserve and what to delete.
The Treasury Board Secretariat , which oversees application of Canada’s access to information legislation, added that government information management policies haven’t changed and continue to “clearly outline employee responsibilities” for information of “business value.”
Clement (Parry Sound-Muskoka) has touted the government’s record on transparency, noting that federal departments and agencies are releasing an increasing volume of documents in response to growth in requests made through access to information legislation.
But the union representing government professionals and scientists is skeptical about the new instructions.
“Given the current government’s track record, a red flag has to go up anytime our members are instructed to delete information,” said Debi Daviau, president of the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada.
“Gathering, maintaining, and assessing evidence has become increasingly difficult under this government and its fondness for secrecy, which has led to muzzling of government scientists.”
The new limits on inboxes are part of a system-wide overhaul of government emails, that would convert 63 separate email systems into a single “@canada.ca” email address for all employees.
A consortium led by Bell Canada was awarded a seven-year contract, worth up to $400 million, to deliver this system.
Daviau said her union was also concerned that the government hasn’t considered using its own employees to manage the email restructuring. She warned that it means profit motives could be conflicting with what’s in the public interest.
“In this case, it could certainly mean that a corporate bottom line decision undermines services and threatens accountability while the price to taxpayers goes up,” she told the Star.
The Treasury Board Secretariat wasn’t immediately able to say Tuesday who had recommended the new email management standard, which came into force on Jan. 1, 2014 and will be phased in over three years. It told the Star that someone set the two-gigabyte limit to “accommodate the significant variance in account sizes” across the government.
Canada’s information watchdog said she wasn’t concerned about the government setting limits on the size of email inboxes as long as it creates systems to preserve “valuable information.”
“It’s important to note, however, that the right of access isn’t confined to information of business value,” said Josée Villeneuve, a spokeswoman for Suzanne Legault, the federal information commissioner. “It applies to all records in existence at the time an institution receives a request (for information), including transitory information.”
In a recent report concluding an investigation into record-keeping of mobile text messages across the government, Legault noted that the right of access to government information is a “quasi-constitutional” right under existing legislation, and that it’s also protected under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which guarantees the right to freedom of expression.
Anyone can read Conversations, but to contribute, you should be a registered Torstar account holder. If you do not yet have a Torstar account, you can create one now (it is free).
To join the conversation set a first and last name in your user profile.
Sign in or register for free to join the Conversation