Given the number of political lies he has told — going back to promising not to raise taxes and then doing so when he first won office in 2003 — why would anyone trust Dalton McGuinty’s testimony Tuesday at the legislative inquiry into the Liberals’ gas plant scandal?

The former premier said he never authorized and didn’t know about the destruction of e-mails in his office by senior staff, related to the Liberals’ political decision to cancel two gas plants, at a cost of at least $585 million, leading up to the 2011 election.

McGuinty dismissed the Legislature’s justice committee hearings into the scandal as a partisan attack on him. He complained his own government’s rules about deleting e-mails were confusing, even though Dr. Ann Cavoukian, Ontario’s Information and Privacy Commissioner, testified earlier in the day they were crystal clear.

But in the end, really, who cares what McGuinty says any more?

Everyone knows what happened here.

The Liberals abused the public purse to save five Liberal seats in the last election and then tried to cover it up.

Whether McGuinty specifically knew about the destruction of emails, or about the rapidly escalating costs of the gas plant cancellations as the Liberals were giving out lowball figures for months, is irrelevant.

If McGuinty didn’t know about these things, and for that matter if Kathleen Wynne didn’t know about them after she became premier, it’s because they didn’t want to know, so they could claim “plausible deniability” if they were asked about them.

Reasonable people know governments that have nothing to hide, don’t systematically and selectively destroy emails about key decisions, nor shut down the Legislature, as McGuinty did, to escape opposition questioning about them.

They don’t hide computer files about gas plants under ridiculous names like “Project Banana” and “Project Vapour” and then ask for public understanding because they’re having trouble finding them.

They don’t attack the credibility of respected officers of the Legislature, like Cavoukian, who showed her professionalism by testifying that while it was irresponsible for McGuinty’s office to delete the gas plant emails, she had no evidence McGuinty personally ordered them destroyed.

The Liberals, on the other hand, have done all these things and their record on the gas plants is a disgrace.