The very day Kathleen Wynne assumed legal authority as Premier of Ontario — Feb. 11 — her office issued this response to one of my Freedom of Information requests.

The FOI response — claiming that the only documents McGuinty’s office had during 2012 amounted to a handful of PR fluff — was effectively a declaration of systematic document destruction by McGuinty’s office.

At the time I filled this FOI, it was the only formal application to a complete record of the information in McGuinty’s office on the gas scandal. The Estimate Committee motion for disclosure that had been the focus of the Justice Policy Committee hearings to that point had specified an earlier time period and had not specified McGuinty’s office.

In the OPP warrant, Peter Wallace, the Cabinet Secretary during the transition period from McGuinty to Wynne, is noted as expressing concern about the necessity of maintaining documents to be able to respond to FOI applications.

I am inclined to believe Kathleen Wynne when she claims that she had no oversight over document destruction while Premier. The timing of the Premier’s Office response to my FOI and the timing of David Livingston’s engagement of Peter Faist to destroy public documents as reported in the OPP warrant, suggests to me that Wynne’s negotiations with McGuinty on the transfer of power may have been a key period in the conspiracy that clearly guided the document destruction intended to conceal public business from the public.