If you know the government or government department that is responsible for the topic that you are researching, it is often much more effective to go directly to the government or the specific department webpage than searching the open web.
There will be a Search box on every home page (government or government department. Often, the Advanced Search option has very useful functionality, such as limiting by date.
TIP: Do not narrow your search too quickly by department. Other departments may have responsibilities that are relevant to your topic. For example, although INAC is obviously the main Canadian federal department with responsibility for Aboriginal affairs, Agriculture and Agri-Foods Canada is responsible for many aspects of rural Canada while HRSDC and Environment Canada's websites contain helpful information with respect to topics such as social development and environmental assessment, respectively.
The general advice of beginning to search on a broad basis and then narrowing down applies in this area, too.
The Canadian Research Index is a database of of Canadian federal, provincial, territorial, regional, and local government publications. There are no links to full text in this database. You will have to do a second search in, for example, a library catalog to locate the actual document.
Canada - Federal
Canada: The main Federal site. For all federal department home pages, the Search box is located in the mid-upper right part of the page.
After the initial set of search results are displayed, note that you can limit by department and by year on the right hand side of the page.
Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada's home page is found here. Indigenous Services Canada's home page is found here.
Government of Canada Publications: Searchable database of print and full-text electronic copies of Government of Canada publications.
Canada - Provincial
Alberta: Government home page
British Columbia: Government home page
Manitoba: Government home page
Ontario: Government home page
Saskatchewan: Government home page
United States
GPO MetaLib: a very powerful tool to locate US federal government publications that covers more areas of federal government activity than FDsys. On the other hand, it usually takes a few more steps to actually obtain the full text of documents discovered through MetaLib,
FDsys is the US federal government's primary database of digital government publications.
International
United NationsUNBISnet: UNBISnet is the place to look for documents from the United Nations and many of its agencies. Some of the major agencies, however, such as FAO, are not included in UNBISnet and have their own web sites and search engines.
World Bank World Bank eLibrary: The World Bank eLibrary contains the full text of the Bank's extensive list of documents on topics relating to all aspects of development.
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