Training centre

Lesson 1

Assign a project reference and document identifier. Record author or sender, recipient and office, date, time and timezone, channel, subject, exact request, attachments and version. Retain the original email with available headers, original attachments, delivery acknowledgment and reply in the approved storage channel. A screenshot or copied quotation is a useful working aid but may omit context and metadata.

Lesson 2

For a call or meeting, take contemporaneous notes and send an accurate follow-up summary requesting corrections and written confirmation of commitments. If no reply arrives, record no response received as of a date; silence is not agreement, guilt or admission. Obtain any required consent and authorization before recording. Do not secretly collect private communications as a training exercise.

Lesson 3

Keep originals separate from annotations and redacted copies. Log who obtained a document, when, from where and each authorized transfer; identify revisions without overwriting prior records. A checksum can help detect file changes but does not prove truth or legal admissibility. CDDA’s contact and audit registers provide an activity trail; they are not a certified archive and do not guarantee courtroom admissibility.

Lesson 4

Practice: index a fictional request, acknowledgment, meeting note and reply in a chronology and evidence matrix. List missing records and contradictions. Use the correct access-to-information process where needed and track its statutory deadlines separately. Follow authorized retention and legal-hold instructions; escalate missing secure storage instead of placing sensitive originals in public forms or personal drives.

Official sources and practice exercise

Open the official sources and complete the final lesson’s practice exercise. Requirements vary by jurisdiction; recheck before a real action. Sources checked October 8, 2026.

• Toronto: public meeting records and privacy (local example)

Passing the check records understanding. Have a coordinator review your exercise before acting; this course does not issue a mandate.