Ontario’s information watchdog says she was dismayed at “misinformation” from bureaucrats during her recent probe into illegally deleted emails in the scandal over scrapped power plants.

A scathing letter by Information and Privacy Commissioner Ann Cavoukian lays blame on the top civil servant in the Ministry of Government Services following her conclusion in a major June report that it would be difficult to recover emails — documents that have since come to light.

“I find it very difficult to accept the fact that your office took my investigation seriously,” Cavoukian wrote to deputy minister Kevin Costante.

She said one major problem was the department’s failure to review the inventory of back-up tapes despite being asked to do so.

“How can this possibly be justified?” added the letter, written Tuesday after Costante revealed it would cost up to $3.5 million to resurrect thousands of emails from 3,226 backup tapes.

They were found in response to a request for more documents from the legislature’s justice committee, which is investigating the $585 million cost of cancelling gas plants in Oakville and Mississauga before the 2011 election.

After that vote, which saw former premier Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals reduced to a minority, he and other top Liberals insisted the cost of closing the plants was $230 million.

“The failures in finding backup tapes point to political interference at the highest levels in hopes of keeping potentially damaging emails under wraps until after five byelections across the province next Thursday,” Progressive Conservative MPP Lisa MacLeod told reporters Thursday.

“I clearly believe that this is a cover-up . . . . I can’t see why a deputy minister would try to embarrass and impede the information and privacy commissioner.

“I think that this has been politically directed, politically motivated for political gain.”

The Ministry of Government Services denied there was political interference and acknowledged that more steps should have been taken to aid Cavoukian in her investigation.

“The ministry has accepted full responsibility and has apologized to the commissioner for this oversight,” said spokesman Ciaran Ganley.

In her report several weeks ago, Cavoukian concluded that potentially sensitive emails deleted by several key political staff contrary to the Archives and Recordkeeping Act would be impossible or prohibitively expensive to track down because of limitations in the Ontario government’s vast computer systems.

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New Democrat House leader Gilles Bisson said Premier Kathleen Wynne’s minority Liberal government has been “caught red-handed” by Cavoukian and the recent discoveries of additional documents.

“Is it bungling or is it a cover-up? I really think they thought they had the emails deleted,” he added in a telephone interview.

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