The Liberals’ late-election gambit to zap a controversial Mississauga gas plant plunged the Ministry of Energy into all-out damage control mode, internal documents reveal.

In the wake of Premier Dalton McGuinty’s $180-million settlement to move the Sherway Gardens-area facility, the ministry has released 500 pages of emails, letters, and PowerPoint presentations.

While heavily edited — many sections appear to be missing — they depict a department seized by a communications crisis after the Liberals’ surprise move Sept. 24.

The scheme helped save at least four Liberal seats in the Oct. 6 election — Mississauga East—Cooksville, Mississauga South, Etobicoke Centre and Etobicoke Lakeshore — but will cost taxpayers or electricity ratepayers.

“They did that without public consultation and at the 11th hour when they knew they were going to lose some seats around the GTA, seats that could have very well ended their reign in power,” Progressive Conservative MPP Rob Leone (Cambridge) said Thursday.

“Was it Dalton McGuinty, was it Dalton McGuinty’s cabinet or was it, as (Energy) Minister (Chris) Bentley stated yesterday, the Liberal campaign team.”

NDP MPP Peter Tabuns (Toronto—Danforth) said the email traffic suggests bureaucrats “understood they were dealing with a highly political decision, no longer a technical decision.”

“The bureaucrats, the people who were responsible for implementing public policy, seem to have been dealt out of this whole decision-making process,” said Tabuns.

But senior mandarins at the Ministry of Energy were closely watching the political machinations.

At 10:54 p.m. on election night, Rick Jennings, assistant deputy minister for energy supply, transmission and distribution policy, messaged Garry McKeever, director of the energy supply and competition branch.

“The Liberals have won all 5 seats in Mississauga handily so they will see . . . the cancellation as a big success,” wrote Jennings on his BlackBerry.

At 11:07 p.m., McKeever replied: “You’re forgetting that the Premier said it had nothing to do with getting votes.”

In the aftermath of the election, the Energy Ministry was preoccupied with how best to spin the decision — especially since the Liberals had initiated the plant in 2004.

Numerous emails suggest the department stonewalled John Spears, the Star’s energy reporter, in one instance taking more than 48 hours to respond to a straightforward query on policy.

Another Ontario Power Authority missive suggests that the government agency was keenly attuned to the political damage Bentley was suffering by refusing to say how much the cancellation could cost.

“The Star boys are getting antsy,” warned a Nov. 2 internal OPA memo, citing Twitter posts interpreted as putting heat on the minister. That led to a mad scramble for tangible information, including the value of the land.

The 11-acre site was estimated to be worth up to $5.54 million, according to a Nov. 4 email to OPA CEO Colin Andersen from David Livingston, then the president and CEO of Infrastructure Ontario and now McGuinty’s chief of staff.

In the settlement Greenfield South Power gets to keep that valuable land just northwest of Sherway plus $85 million for costs, while EIG Management LLC, which financed the project, receives $88 million. There are also $7 million in site-specific costs as part of the deal that resolved all lawsuits.

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The plant will be relocated to Lambton, near Sarnia.

Last Nov. 17, Jim Hinds, the OPA’s chair, expressed concern that any resolution of the Mississauga situation would have a negative impact on a still-unfinished agreement to abandon a similar Oakville plant in 2010 to help area Liberal MPPs.

When Bentley announced the $180 million payout Tuesday, he said the Oakville matter was still being negotiated. He was not available for comment Thursday.

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