Ontario’s new majority Liberal government should put “strong” teeth into laws requiring political staff and bureaucrats to preserve records in the wake of the $1.1-billion gas plants scandal now under OPP investigation, urges Information and Privacy Commissioner Ann Cavoukian.

“In the absence of any penalty or consequences, there’s no deterrent,” Cavoukian said Tuesday in delivering her final annual report.

She would not specify a penalty but Wynne’s government said it is planning to reintroduce legislation proposed in March with a maximum $5,000 penalty for the “willful destruction of records with the intent to deny a request for access.”

“It remains a high priority,” said Jenna Mannone, spokeswoman for the Ministry of Government Services.

Cavoukian also called for the government to update provincial and municipal freedom of information laws to better reflect “explosive growth” in the Internet, allow for municipal councillors’ travel, hospitality and other expenses to be made public, and to disclose government contracts so Ontarians know how their money is being spent.

“Push the data out so people don’t have to go hunting for it,” she told a 45-minute news conference, saying disclosure of contracts should be “routine.”

Municipal councillors’ records should also be available through Freedom of Information requests, Cavoukian added.

A year ago, Cavoukian issued a scathing report about deleted documents in the gas plants scandal, stemming from the cancellation of plants in Oakville and Mississauga before the 2011 election.

Progressive Conservative and New Democrats MPPs complained that there were few, if any, documents on the cancellations from the offices of former premier Dalton McGuinty and his energy minister Chris Bentley.

The Ontario Provincial Police anti-rackets squad is now investigating and has seized 24 computer hard drives that were in the premier’s office at the time.

Cavoukian said it was “offensive” to taxpayers that documents they have paid for were deleted.

She praised Premier Kathleen Wynne, who took over from McGuinty 16 months ago, for putting new systems in place to train staff about the importance of keeping records, and said it is up to her government — re-elected with a majority last week — to toughen laws around document retention.

Currently, the retention of government documents falls under the Archives and Recordkeeping Act, which is not a criminal statute and carries no penalties.

Court documents released last week indicate that a preliminary OPP examination of the hard drives seized from the premier’s office shows they were scrubbed with a program called WhiteCanyon, which is also approved and used by the U.S. Department of Defence.

In an interview with the OPP in April, McGuinty laid the blame for any lax record keeping on his former chief of staff, David Livingston, who is now under police investigation for breach of trust. Police alleged he obtained a special password enabling the holder to scrub computers and gave it to a non-government employee who was the computer-savvy boyfriend of his deputy chief.

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Livingston has denied any wrongdoing and has not been charged.

McGuinty told police most of the deliberations in his office were “oral” and “our practice was to hash things out in person.”

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