McGuinty, Wynne wear e-mail scandal

Former premier Dalton McGuinty and current Premier Kathleen Wynne cannot wash their hands of the gas plants scandal that reignited Thursday with the OPP laying criminal charges against two top McGuinty aides.

It will be up to the courts to determine whether McGuinty’s former chief of staff, David Livingston, and former deputy chief of staff, Laura Miller, are guilty of three counts each of breach of trust, mischief in relation to data and misuse of a computer system to commit mischief.

This in connection with the deletion of thousands of e- mails from computers in the premier’s office on the cancellation of gas plants in Mississauga and Oakville.

They say they are innocent and will fight the charges.

McGuinty’s lawyer said the charges confirm there was no wrongdoing on his part.

Wynne said she has apologized for the scandal and the reason for the charges date back to before she became premier. But let’s not kid the troops. McGuinty presided over a Liberal government that did everything it could to avoid giving the public a full and honest accounting of the decisions that led to the gas plants scandal.

Its origins lie in McGuinty’s decision to cancel the plants for political reasons — his fear of losing Liberal seats in the 2011 election due to community opposition to them.

We don’t believe McGuinty’s testimony before the legislative inquiry that looked into the gas plants scandal that he had no idea of what the real costs would be to the public, until the auditor general of Ontario pegged them at up to $ 1.1 billion.

We don’t believe Wynne’s testimony that, as a senior cabinet minister in the McGuinty government and co- chair of the 2011 Liberal campaign, she had no idea of what the real costs would be, and continued to have no idea after she became premier.

Whether McGuinty as premier and Wynne after she became premier had prior knowledge about the destruction of the e- mails — and they say they did not — is irrelevant.

If McGuinty didn’t know, and Wynne didn’t know, what does that say about their competence as leaders of successive Liberal governments?

We aren’t accusing them of criminal wrongdoing.

We’re accusing the governments they presided over of political corruption in this scandal.