Dalton McGuinty’s last chief of staff got a deputy’s IT-savvy boyfriend “unrestricted” access to 24 employees’ computers in the premier’s office before and after Kathleen Wynne took power, alleges a search warrant request from an OPP officer probing deleted emails in the $1.1 billion scandal over cancelled power plants.
Before obtaining the access, chief of staff David Livingston told the executive assistant to Cabinet Secretary Peter Wallace of his intent to use a person from outside the Ontario Public Service to wipe out hard drives in the offices of the premier during the transition to Wynne’s government, the document alleges.
If you wish to send a few words of support to the former Premier in this difficult time, a helpful reader has provided Dalton McGuinty’s email address at Harvard.
More details at the National Post.
Misfeasnace, malfeasnace or nonfeasance?
CRooked LIBERAL bastards are still governing and Horwath’s ND’s are still proping them, eh?
Where is an Ontarian Mike Harris clone when needed?
Get balls Tim Hudak!
He got his boyfriend to erase the hard drives? God, is nobody in that government straight?
Wynne, Smitherman,that homosexual pedophile ( forget his name) etc. etc. All queers.
Why would Livingston do this on his own? What would he gain by doing such a thing without orders from his Boss, Dalton McLiar? Was it a collaborated effort starting with McGuinty’s convenient resignation so he could say he knew nothing and then his party chosen successor could claim to know nothing as well?
Why would Livingston hire an outside person to wipe out emails pertaining to government business if it wasn’t to hide something and save McLiar’s ass on the gas plant fiasco.
The only innocents here are the taxpayers of Ontario,the Liberal party of Ontario has taken this province to a place never before seen in it’s history and continues on the same destructive path with Windy Wynne telling us we need her capable hands to take care of us.
God help us in the province of no stupid voters who buy Liberal snake oil by the truckload.
Hate to disagree with you, Joe, but I think Mr. Hudak was pretty clear in the articles what he thinks needs to happen. It’s Ms. Horwath who’s the problem, actually.
Coincidentally, Glenn Reynolds has this a.m. linked to this Kevin Williamson article:
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/374528/which-side-are-you-kevin-d-williamson
Mr. Williamson’s advice applies entirely to the Canadian and Ontario scenes as well. Ontario isn’t Alberta, and I doubt very much if Mr. Hudak is Ms. Redford in drag.
Time to, as required, screw up your courage and/or hold your nose, folks.
Nobody in the power miasma of Queen’s Park would dare wipe the computers without ‘moms’ permission.
David
All the recent CP leaders have been Nancy Boys, and that IS the problem with the PCs. My rep sent out a “letter” stating she was working on “Bullying Laws/rules” for schools. We don’t/didn’t need any, what we need is pols who force those running our schools to do their job, and if they can’t, fire them and replace with a can-do type. WhoDat (Hudak) is just liberal lite standing on a bible.
This type of dishonest behaviour got Adrian Dix promoted from chief of staff to party leader in the BC NDP. Livingston will just take a bit of time off then come back to replace Wynne. Politics as usual.
When Carl Bernstein was investigating Watergate his mantra was “follow the money”
Is it possible that the Green Energy Plan is an elaborate scam which started to unravel when McGuinty lost his majority and the light began to shine on the shenanigans when he was forced to open the books under his control? Open them he did in dribs and drabs while a deleting frenzy ensued.
Mike Crawley was the Ontario Liberal party President when he signed an obscenely lucrative contact with McGuinty with no competative bids or public consultations allowed.
Was any information shared among Liberal when Crawley profitably sold his company for hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars.
His reward for becoming an air farmer extrordinaire-he was appointed President of the Liberal party of Canada.
Why the secret obsession of making sure all relevant E-mails were made to disappear?
Maybe the Liberals are worried that when they lose an election the winner will do a omplete investigation and expose the Liberals for the rats they are.
That’s why McGuinty ran away and left others to take the heat.
Follow the money.
How anyone could ever vote for this piece of shit is totally beyond me. You deserve what you got.
The worst part about this is that their actions are directly leading to people downsizing and moving into cramped, drug riddled apartments and that is exactly what they wanted all along. Slave to big government, slave to property owners. Slave to Unions and the elite ruling class who never seem to be short on funds to ever be inconvenienced by anything.
What horror show.
I am not excited about the next provincial election for three reasons:
Hudak could have made Mcguinty wear all his scandals in the last election and it didn’t happen.
People are tuned into mind numbing distractions and don’t seem too concerned about wasted tax funds.
When I try to discuss politics I still get “Yeah, but Harris…””
Chester:
The boyfriend doing the black bag job belonged to Laura Miller, NcGuinty’s staffer, so we can assume they are a heterosexual pair.
In a further affront to taxpayers, Miller worked something like 2 months for McGuinty but received $154,000 in severance pay; she actually appeared on Ont Sunshine list, Now she works for the BC Liberals. This according to a Post Media story.
What is so seemly about this saga is how someone’s boyfriend can enter the Premier of Ont secured office, and begin wiping workers’ computers. 24 machines were involved and none of the 24 staffers saw anything unusual, noticed their accounts missing. wondered what this guy was doing, told him to take a hike.
And what exactly was Wynne doing at the time? Just like the initial cancellation order with her name on it: saw nothing, heard nothing, did nothing.
Ont Liberals at work, a satirist just couldn’t make this stuff up.
Has anyone aggregated an updated list of ALL the political scandals currently unfolding in this country?
You know, it’s damn difficult maintaining the appropriate amount of outrage year after year after f>cking year. I can’t keep it up anymore. Especially dealing with bigoted partisan *ssholes who defend their own “kind” no matter what sleaze they pull.
We have to change the status quo if western civilization is to survive. The waste created by political maneuvering is STAGGERING! The CPC, LPC, NDP, etc, have no intention of changing a thing. The current system is keeping them all fat and happy, whether they currently hold power or are simply waiting for their turn to rule us puny revenue generators. They use the illusion that there is any real ideological difference between them to divide neighbors. Having been there when the Reform movement was a grass-roots newborn, I can tell you Harper is no Reformer, he is Liberal Lite.
Keeping us serfs fighting among ourselves is a very effective way to keep us from co-coordinating and storming the castle.
Blind partisanship is a crippling and debilitating mental disorder. Please give generously.
I don’t know anything about the politics but having an outsider IT person tamper with government computers is in itself a crime. Having said this, a good IT staff should have BACKUP COPIES of every computer e-mail that was run through the government e-mail system …. without exception. Nothing has been said about this so it remains unclear if the e-mail files are truly erased (including the backup files). If the 24 computer operators were using an outside e-mail provider, possibly the e-mails can still be recovered. A truly “tech savvy” IT person would know all of this.
So as you see, some significant details are missing from this story.
No Liberal will see the inside of a real courtroom let alone a jail cell because the public inquiries that all the politicians and their MSM bedfellows will insist upon will taint any criminal proceedings thereby making prosecutions impossible. The old political two step.
David, the emails were deleted and then “found”, undoubtedly in backups. What it seems like is the chief of staff knew nothing about computers/IT/Networks, panicked, and brought in the proverbial “friend who knows computers”. He simply wiped the desktops in the mistaken belief that that would delete the emails. Of course, wiping the hard drives also wiped any documents stored locally on those computers but I would think that is of minimal importance. Really, it just sounds like what a management doofus and the typical non-IT “computer whiz” would do because they didn’t understand the nature of IT. Still, the crime was committed, whether it was effective or not.
“…The only innocents here are the taxpayers of Ontario, …”
They voted for this. In a democracy you are either choosing to let it happen or choosing to let others choose to let it happen.
Innocents? More like guilty of apathy.
Right on Tooner.
Mike Crawley was elected president of the Liberals about 2 years ago at a convention that was covered heavily by the CBC and their friends. The McGuinty brothers were part of Crawley’s team of supporters.
He resigned a month or so ago.
Not one reporter asked him why. They lied by omission once again.
I suspect it was one of two reasons;
1) He and JT were not compatible for various reasons.
2) Crawley’s very green deal is in danger of being exposed and it was time to distance himself.
The rot in the Liberal party is right to the core.
BTW, McGuinty works in the same department at Harvard as Ignatieff, gee what a coincidence.
If this is true then some people need to go to jail.
One can assume the staffers in the Premier’s office in 2012 would be computer literate enough to hit the delete button, purge e-mails and empty folders and generally clear up disc space for successors at their work station.But as any reader of detective novels can attest, this leaves the data imbeded on the computer hard drive, to be retreived later. Only a IT guru would know how to wipe hard drives completely. This makes it even more questionable why McGuinty’s chief of staff took it upon himself to do exactly that.
Of course McGuinty and Wynne have denied ever ordering him to do this, Wynne acts like she never even met the fellow. All the work of one rogue staffer no doubt.
Wynne tries to change the channel:
“Wynne threatens Hudak with legal action over power plant allegations.”
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/wynne-threatens-hudak-with-legal-action-over-power-plant-allegations/article17729530/
This is really about sexism, isn’t that right? She knew nothing … nothing.
The NDP will keep the Liberals in power.
So Wynne is now threatening to sue Hadak. The arrogance of these politicians knows no bounds whatsoever. If it is not Queen Redford, now is it Queen or King (or whatever) Wynne.
Agree with “David from Michigan”
The seized workstations are a red herring. The forensic investigators are either grossly incompetent or under political control. Corporate or institutional email service almost always runs on MS Exchange and OutLook. All messages – whether read or unread – reside on the server, not the workstation. Further, modern backup and archival server-based systems retain everything – file modification or deletion notwithstanding.
The perps in this debacle were likely aware of this – so probably used personal POP accounts (e.g.GMail) or temporary disposable email accounts to evade culpability.
As always there are many unanswerable questions and questionable answers.
Hudak’s brakes might work a bit better than the Libs (that doesn’t take much), but were just going to reach the bottom of the hill a little slower.
If I hear a politician that intelligently and with some integrity says we are broke, soft, intellectually and physically as a province , things must change, and it will be very hard – They have my vote. Otherwise I’m really used to the smell.
If people won’t vote for the truth, the need some first hand.
The real story here is how a scandal of this magnitude has flown so long virtually unnoticed by the msm. The email deletions are just another smoking gun. The billion dollar bill to compensate a breach of contract to the unborn Ontario taxpayers all based on a political whim of the premier is deserving of jail time all around. The msm spent the better part of a year fretting over senator’s expense accounts (paid back) amounting to a rounding error on the interest on this scandal while little was heard of it.
Leftist culture is very self-forgiving. Back when Gordon Campbell killed the Kemano completion project, BC ending up paying Alcan half a billion but instead of frying their favorite enemy, Campbell was given a free ride because the watermelons were onside with his decision.
A likely scenario is that the incriminating e-mails had been purged from the mail system, but these computers had kept a local cache of the individual users’ mailboxes, which means the messages could have still been recovered.
This is what pisses off all the peoples of the “Western Democracies”.
The political elite, which includes bureaucrats and executives of “public” bodies not directly part of the government, as well as politicians, just get on board the gravy train and mostly remain in obscurity while the work they are supposed to do goes unattended.
Hi, I’m Darryl McSquinty and I swears it was my other brother, Darryl, what made ’em do it!
I find it amazing that so many that consider themselves informed, think this level of corruption and decay can be dealt with by an election or regime change.
This is Ontario’s Watergate. Ontario voters better wise up and fast.
Sometimes I find myself thinking that the inside power folks hire gay people knowing that the media will treat them with kid gloves.
They’re precious you know.
and I don’t believe that Wynne didn’t know what was going on. I’m not saying she’s lying, I’m saying I don’t believe her.
It’s especially fun to see the Globe & Mail / Torstar covering this mess. The National Post is of course doing it’s part with similar coverage of how everyone is not treating her fairly. I enjoy the photo of her looking hounded. A billion dollars is still enough money to get things done!
http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/03/30/wynne-threatens-legal-action-against-hudak-over-claim-she-possibly-ordered-alleged-gas-plant-coverup/
If she had an actual case against him, and wasn’t afraid of actual disclosure, she shouldn’t be threatening, she should be doing. The threatening tells me she’s using it to shut him up, and doesn’t really want to open her case to the other side or media.
Are email caches kept on servers still? Does the OPP know how many officers could be funded with the billion that’s been wasted? 🙂
First off in any company I have ever worked for allowing an outsider to access your computer is an act that will get your butt terminated with cause.
Second there are backup tapes somewhere. In any IT shop worth it’s salt the servers and contents are backed up nightly. Those tapes are rotated and archived and there is offsite storage somewhere. Tapes with the e-mails in question exist somewhere. If they do not the IT manager needs to be fired for incompetence or corruption.
Third why are the people of Ontario putting up with this? it’s past time for writing letters! It’s past time for calling our MPP’s! It’s time for an angry mob to descend on Queens park with pitch forks and torches. It’s time for these Liberal, NDP and “red tory” PC scum to be tarred feathered and run out of the province on a rail.
McWhynty,and Uncle Dalt should have the book thrown at them and a prison sentence so long neither will ever see the outside of a jail cell again.
As for McWhynty threatening to sue Hudak, Kathy, you are judged by the company you keep in and in your case you hang with thieves,liars,con artists,pedophiles,fraudsters,hackers and those who would commit treason. You were in caucus, and now are leader of the party and you ought to have known what Dalton was up to during his rule. Once you ascended to power must have known. To say otherwise is an admission that essentially the CEO of Ontario did not know what was going on and had no clue how things were being done. Essentially clueless. So what is it Kathy? are you corrupt or clueless?
FWIW, apparently this is not news at the CBC.
The Canada, World, and Politics pages do not have any mention of this story. Then again, it is the weekend and most of their employees are resting.
“Note very Liberal is a horse thief, but every horse thief is a Liberal.” – Sir John A. Macdonald
“It’s time for an angry mob to descend on Queens park with pitch forks and torches. It’s time for these Liberal, NDP and “red tory” PC scum to be tarred feathered and run out of the province on a rail.”
Please,Robert.It’s a nice fantasy, but in “civilized sophisticated” Canada, not bloody likely.
Ontario is a Province where a fellow gets arrested because his 5 year old daughter drew a picture of the letter “L” on a whiteboard.
I admire the people around the world who DO get so pi**ed off at government corruption they actually do what needs to be done, but not here in Canada. Never.
Robert Jones:
One cannot overstate that Ont is completely divided along rural/urban lines and Wynne still enjoys a slight lead in polls. After all the scandals which Toronto media have studiously ignored for the past 2 years, Liberals and PCs are in a statistical tie.
Due to the arcane rules of the Ont legislature a non confidence motion can only be tabled on a money bill. Thus as long as she can avoid a budget she can hold onto power. PCs have had a nc motion on hold for over a year, but the government house leader prevents it from being even debated.
In Alta it was the party that forced Redford out, but for the Ont Liberals to consider such a thing is laughable. Like some 3rd world oligarchy the Ont Liberals cling to power despite all the corruption and mismanagement they have initiated. Not your grandfather’s Ontario.
Things are going to get interesting.Premier Perjury is now threatening to sue Whodat.http://www.torontosun.com/2014/03/30/premier-kathleen-wynne-threatens-to-sue-hudak-over-e-mail-comments
wallyj:
Mike “creepy” Crawley was at the Trudeau 2.0 coronation when they elected the wife of Justin’s best friend Anna Gainey as the new President of the Liberal party of Canada.
Crawley couldn’t squeeze anything more out of tax payers so you’re right,McGuinty and him got out before the whole scheme was exposed.
Bocanut
Now Whine has responded to Hudak’s accusations with an open letter, threatening law suites if he does not withdraw his, and the PC party’s, allegations.
He cannot now withdraw, otherwise he goes down to ignominious defeat.
I hope he has a plan here.
“Please,Robert.It’s a nice fantasy, but in “civilized sophisticated” Canada, not bloody likely.
Ontario is a Province where a fellow gets arrested because his 5 year old daughter drew a picture of the letter “L” on a whiteboard.”
therein lies the problem. We have allowed these scum to rule us and steal our wealth because we are “civilized and sophisticated” we don’t want to rock the boat.
This abuse of the people will continue until we say no.
“One cannot overstate that Ont is completely divided along rural/urban lines and Wynne still enjoys a slight lead in polls. After all the scandals which Toronto media have studiously ignored for the past 2 years, Liberals and PCs are in a statistical tie.”
Absolutely but lets also admit that the Ontario PC party is mostly “red tories”. When presented with a choice of soft left,left and far left, the voters will stick with what they know. When John Tory was defeated, the PC party had an opportunity to rebuild and purge the reds. They squandered that chance, electing Hudak instead.
Until the Ontario PC party cleans house and gets a leader we’ll be stuck with Kathy and most likely her successor.
An even bigger scandal than McGuinty and Wynne’s (alleged) criminal acts is how people tolerate them, whether they be the popular press, Andrea Horvath or Liberal voters. Should Kathleen Wynne be strapped to a rocket and shot into the sun, she can take Andrea Horvath and their voters with them.
Well, I don’t mean to be a Tory snoop at all (no one would ever accuse me of that, I’m sure), but a simple internet search (Google) yields the following (scroll down a bit on each one and notice the overlays):
http://www.homecareontario.ca/public/docs/news/2008/sept/mcguinty-names-members-of-ehealth-backgrounder.pdf
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ehealth-scandal-a-1b-waste-auditor-1.808640
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/scandal-grows-at-ehealth-ontario/article4213813/
http://www.ryerson.ca/news/media/General_Public/20120209_MR_livingston.html
http://ca.linkedin.com/pub/david-livingston/8/b23/860
http://www.ontariopc.com/news/article/hudak-wynne-must-come-clean-on-gas-plant-cover-up
The last one (from the Ontario PC Party, is a bit misleading, since Ms. Wynne actually became Premier on February 11, 2013, but it hardly discredits the evidence that Mr. Livingston has been, variously (both before and after; pause for breath), coincidentally, consecutively, juxtaposedly, or continually, after September 29, 2008:
– CEO of Infrastructure Ontario;
– a member of the board of eHealth Ontario;
– a professor at Ryerson University (which was created, actually, by, you know, Bob Rae, and among whose former distinguished faculty include the late Jack Layton);
– and (drum roll) Chief of Staff to Mr. McGuinty.
Heck, it’s almost like he’s been at the centre of things forEVAH, and he just never left. And now we find out, in the articles, that his former Executive Assistant is at (wait for it) — Ryerson University! Who knew?
Suggestion to Mr. Livingston: pull a Michael Mann and sue me!
Keep a good eye on Vic Fedeli, PC MPP for my area. He’s been a firecracker under the Libs butts since he was elected, and he won’t quit. SUN media of course are the only ones giving him ‘air’ time. He’s been responsible for exposing all this info.
Quite so. A conservative party only winds when it is conservative. If it is a soft left “Red Tory” party, then the electorate spots a fake and votes for the real thing.
RINO, CINO, Red Tory, Progressive Conservative, Green Blues (Cameron, UK) are all losers. The only way is to be conservative.
“They squandered that chance, electing Hudak instead.”
The problem was that apart for Randy who never had a chance and dropped out first round (endorsing WhoDat) the other two where even redder than WhoDat.
Your reasoning os right, though it is the only way to do it in a peaceful manner.
It is also true that elections will change much, whoever gets elected.
Democracy works only when the demos are seriously interested in outcome.
Amen:
“Successful conservatives don’t move towards the ‘political centre’. They move the political centre towards them.” ~ Mark Steyn
Should read “elections will not change much”
The damn strawberry writes on its own.