Page: 12 of the City’s conduct in relation to them. It does not, in my view, constitute custody by the City, within the meaning of the Act. This approach is consistent with existing case authority [43] In my opinion, this approach is fully consistent with the existing case law and with policy statements of the IPC itself. [44] In a Guildeline issued in March 1997 entitled “Electronic Records: Maximizing Best Practices” the IPC noted that freedom of information legislation had been conceived when the full impact of information technology had yet to be felt. The purpose of these Guidelines was to suggest best practices for dealing with electronic records. In particular, the IPC considered what types of electronic records should be preserved by institutions and stated (at page 6) that emails “relating to the mandate or functions of the organization” should be considered a record for the purposes of the Act.” At the same time, the guideline noted, “There is not doubt that in some cases e-mail bears no relation to the mandate or functions of the organization (for example, personal messages) or is so inconsequential that may not need to be retained for operational purposes.” It is clear that, at least at this point, the IPC did not contemplate that personal emails of City employees would be covered by the Act. [45] I believe the same principles emerge from the limited case authority available. In David v. Ontario (Information and Privacy Commissioner)16 the Divisional Court considered whether documents in the possession of an independent investigator appointed by the City of Toronto could be said to be in the control of the City. The Court held that the investigator was not an employee or officer of the City and could not be characterized as an agent of the City because he was required to conduct his inquiry arms-length from the City. The Court therefore concluded that the documents held by the investigator were not in the control of the City, even though some of them were actually stored on a computer owned by the City. (It should be noted, however, that in that case the computer had been allocated to the inquiry and was not accessible to persons outside the inquiry staff.) [46] A similar conclusion was reached by the Court of Appeal in Walmsley in dealing with documents in the possession of individual members of the Judicial Appointments Committee. The Court held that although the content of the documents related to work for the Ministry (as the Committee acted in an advisory capacity to the Ministry), they could not be said to be within the control of the Ministry for the purposes of the Act. One of the factors influencing the court in reaching that conclusion was the fact that the Legislature could not have intended that simply by giving advice to the Attorney-General individuals would be subjected to the access provisions and also the recordkeeping aspects of the Act. The Court also held, at p. 619: The Ministry had no statutory or contractual right to dictate to the committee or its individual members what documents they could create, use or maintain or what use to make of the documents they do possess. The Ministry had no statutory or contractual basis upon which to assert the right to possess or dispose of these 16 David v. Ontario (Information and Privacy Commissioner), [2006] O.J. No. 4351, 217 O.A.C. 112 (Div.Ct.)