Ontario Liberals Paid $10K To Have Hard Drives Wiped

cfra.com

The Ontario Liberal government paid $10,000 to have the spouse of a Dalton McGuinty staffer wipe the hard drives of 20 computers, according to newly unsealed police documents.

The documents also indicate that police claim they had “reasonable grounds” to believe that one of the premier’s chiefs of staff committed a criminal offence.

The documents are from an OPP investigation into deleted Liberal government emails that dealt with the cancellation of gas-fired power plants in Oakville and Mississauga.

The plants were nixed by former premier McGuinty in what opposition parties have said was a move to save Liberal seats. The decision is estimated to have cost taxpayers up to $1.1 billion.

In November, OPP served a search warrant to IT staff at a provincial cyber security office in Toronto. Police documents regarding the results of the warrant were unsealed on Thursday.

The email inboxes of McGuinty’s former chiefs of staff, Laura Miller and David Livingston, were seized by police. The emails include encrypted and protected documents dated between May 1, 2012 and Feb. 11, 2013.

The documents reveal that Miller’s spouse, computer expert Peter Faist, told police that approximately 20 hard drives in the premier’s office were wiped following the cancellation of the plants. They also reveal that 632,118 files were deleted.
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