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“When I hesitated, he took away my keyboard, deleted the emails and returned the keyboard, stating, ‘It’s done. Now you don’t have to worry about it anymore,’ ” Duncan wrote in a May letter addressed to the privacy commissioner. When he took his concerns to a Liberal political staffer, Duncan claimed, the employee told him: “It’s like The West Wing. You do whatever it takes to win.” At about the same time, the NDP was told that the documents it was requesting through freedom of information legislation did not exist.

The privacy commissioner has since launched an investigation into the issue. Duncan said he was transferred and then fired in March. His letter, on the other hand, has become a political hot potato. It was addressed in the B.C. legislature last week. Minister Stone claimed that he knew nothing of any problems in his ministry, and required his staff to comply with existing freedom of information laws. For his part, Duncan said he never saw what was in the emails. He only saw the subject lines.

Why did Duncan come forward?

Duncan, who has since moved to Calgary while calling the B.C. government a “cesspool,” said he felt compelled to go public because he had witnessed first-hand the effects of domestic violence. “I unfortunately had a very similar experience to them, my dad was murdered in a domestic incident so I sympathize with the pain and suffering every single one of these families went through. To watch as the government doesn’t take it seriously — a lot of staffers think it is a joke — and it is repulsive to me,” he told the CBC in an interview. For its part, the government has painted Duncan as a disgruntled former employee. Minister Stone added: “I want to be very clear that, as a minister, I expect the staff who work in my office to adhere 100 per cent to the requirements of the applicable legislation.”

National Post