06.10.2013 01:22 PM

Email experiment

Below this post are options to share on Facebook, Twitter or as email.

Send it to someone as an email, then delete it.

Presto! You have just commited what is considered an actual criminal offence at Queen’s Park!

Congratulations! Now, go turn youself in to the OPP!

21 Comments

  1. Blue+Red=Purple says:

    Same-party transitions don’t go and purge/delete entire mailboxes.

    • Warren says:

      That so? That tells me you are a liar, or you make a shit up.

      • Cromwell says:

        It’s not as if the Ontario PCs didn’t purge every single trace of anything electronic they ever authored when they were booted out in 2003. What a hypocritical farce these committee hearings are. Hudak was Minister of Consumer and Business Services in the Eves government – why not question him about document retention in his Ministry during transition ?

  2. txwikinger says:

    Unfortunately this is the problem with the media nowadays. The facts are twisted to the point they do not make any sense any more.

    A private person does not have the same obligations of record keeping that public officials or public organisations have. Hence, how a private person deals with their e-mails is not under the same laws as the e-mails of politicians, civil servants, or political advisers in Queens Park or any other government office.

    Unfortunately, governments on all levels in Canada and other countries (see NSA) have the fundamental principle wrong. Private information of private persons must be protected. The government’s business must be transparent.

    Let never anybody tell you that the “Public’s business is not the business of the public” !!!

  3. If you did that while acting as an employee of the Government and a servant of the people accountable for your actions, yet I can understand how that could be or should be illegal. When that action is dug up by an Access to Information request or a request from a committee it is for the people to judge its significance.

    It shouldn’t be hard to set up an email system to permanently archives all email. It’s probably easier then setting up a system doesn’t.

    Technically I don’t think it isn’t a criminal offense, but a offense again the Archives and Recordkeeping Act or Contempt of Provincial Parliament. Still in either case jail time is a theoretical possibility.

  4. Ottawa Civil Servant says:

    Come on, Warren. You know that the ownership of those emails rests with the Crown. When I receive an ATIP, I have to include copies of my hand-written note pad chicken scratch, let alone electronic messages related to the subject. And I am forbidden from destroying those files. I have official retention periods, $100M electronic archives, catalogue systems and annual shredding parties for 6-year old+ files.

    Everybody knows you cannot delete files, from clerks to commissioners.

    Or did all of these unelected enablers unwittingly break the law? Were they criminally stupid, criminally ignorant, or willfully criminal?

    • Warren says:

      No, you’re right. Emails from Mom are top secret; delete them at your peril. And, coincidentally, who cares about crack at City Hall and fraud in the Conservative Senate? This email stuff is way more important!

  5. steve says:

    First only total idiots would put anything criminal in an email. Remember GWB quote about using email, he never uses it, as he said because for sure it would end up in Congress. So there was nothing in these emails. Second, the optics are bad. Third if you really want to see the emails, why are you not crying for Transcanda to release them.
    For me the real scandal is how the cost of cancelation morphed from $40 million as anyone would expect, to hundreds of millions due to the less than favorable terms(for taxpayers) in a P3 type contract.

  6. Hochelagonian tea sippin' luddite says:

    I’ve got an old steam-driven system. My e-mail options for helping keep my “In Basket” neat and tidy, are: “Delete,” yes, delete.

    But wait – that’s not all! I can also set up personal files for any e-mail traffic sent and/or received. Maybe that function got lost in the transition from steam-driven to electrically-powered systems. How nice. How lucky for the gang.

    Cover-up? No. Chalk it up to Progress.

    Progress – and electricity – they’re the ones at fault. And it’s all a flukey coincidence that nobody ever attended Dalton’s Cabinet Meetings on these issues, allowing all to chant:
    “I know nothing!”
    “I don’t recall!”
    “I wasn’t present- no really – I was not there – EVER!!”

    ’tis so sad, weren’t it so, ‘twould be to larff!

    The phat guy in City Hall is a fortunate diversion and deflection for the Queen’s Park buckaroos. Keep flogging him. Eventually he get his due rewards, and that’ll leave a very, very vulnerable bunch of Liberal pols and supporters standing out in stark silhouette against the setting sun.

    It ought to prove messy and very painful – and most revealing. The last perp to run the gauntlet always gets the most brutal going over.

  7. partrick says:

    Well, “appearance is everything” (a cliché I hate) and it does look like information is being deleted – for someone who thinks in the terms of “mail” being mail whether on paper or digital.
    It is the assumption of digital information being single source and precious, just like a letter or memo.
    And to be fair, I think it might be difficult to process how different the channeling of information is now, if that’s not what you have grown up with.
    And it’s great opportunity for political partisans to make political hay with the confusion.

  8. Patty Jackson says:

    I didn’t know the Archives and Recordkeeping Act was part of the Criminal Code of Canada. Seems to me, waving around the “criminal” banner is dangerously close to libel…

    You’re the lawyer? What am I missing?

  9. smelter rat says:

    Deleting emails from your computer is not the same thing as deleting emails from the server. Civil Servant 101.

  10. billg says:

    Sad part is, Im sure the staffers thought that all deleted emails went into a history loop and were archived. And, is it just me or does the Premier look and sound more like a Premier every day. Im not running out to buy a red lawn sign, but, she is very impressive.

  11. Ian Howard says:

    Trust is in short supply these days and the McGuinty regime has no one to blame but themselves for the skepticism and cynicism that greet the latest announcement. After arguing in the most partisan of terms that 230 million was the cost of cancelling the power plants when it was clear that number would not stand scrutiny and insisting to the opposition that they were in possession of all the documents ( presumably they weren’t counting those already erased ) when there was far more to come team McGuinty committed political suicide.
    If they had admitted early on that the cost was not easily calculated and was bound to be very expensive this political firestorm would be forgotten and we would likely be talking about Dwight Duncan as Dalton’s successor but arrogance and entitlement allowed them to believe the truth would never surface. Funny thing is the truth was bad but not a deal breaker but a coverup or the appearance of coverup just won’t go away.

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