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When he abruptly quit his job five years ago, former Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty let it be known he was upset at the furore opposition members had mounted over a pair of cancelled gas plants.

“The opposition’s political games are holding Ontario back,” he railed, fed up with demands for ever-more information, more inquiries, more answers about his mid-campaign decision to cancel the two projects at a cost of $1 billion, a decision that appeared to have everything to do with Liberal election prospects and little to do with public good. Before departing he pointedly prorogued the legislature, shutting down hearings on the scandal while the Liberals picked a new leader.

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Now that leader — Kathleen Wynne, a senior member of McGuinty’s cabinet and co-chair of the 2011 re-election campaign — wants it known that she sees the gas plant scandal as tired, old and unworthy of the attention the media and opposition insist on paying it. Indeed, when former McGuinty chief of staff David Livingston was convicted Friday of deliberately destroying documents in an effort to contain the scandal, Wynne’s office treated it as some ancient issue from a distant past. (McGuinty himself had not faced any charges.)