Confession: I deleted 2,245 emails this week, pretty much clearing out my inbox.

Corporate IT demands we prune emails to prevent our servers from overflowing with digital detritus. The usual robotic warning came Tuesday to double-delete or my account would freeze up:

“You must empty the Deleted Items folder after deleting items or the space will not be freed.”

So I did. But before nuking my own inbox — and this is important — I saved some stuff: upcoming playdates for my daughters, lunches with sources, and research about misbehaving politicians.

I didn’t feel guilty — until I sat down, later that morning, to hear Ontario’s information commissioner testify before a legislative committee about people who clean out inboxes.

“Who does that?” Ann Cavoukian asked MPPs incredulously, as she publicly shamed Liberal staffers who claimed they did precisely that. “We are all very busy people.”

Oops. Let me tell you how deletions can get you in trouble if you don’t save the important stuff.

A political tempest is brewing at Queen’s Park and becoming increasingly caffeinated: What began as Gasgate has transmogrified into Emailgate.

Public hearings into the costly cancellation of gas-fired power plants are now following the email trail. The focus has shifted from cancellations to deletions, with former Liberal staffers under intense scrutiny for clearing out any email correspondence over the gas plants.

Like Watergate, the cover-up trumps the crime. But what if there was no original sin in cancelling the gas plants?

So far, it seems that the soaring cost of relocating two gas plants (more than $585 million at last count) is increasingly an old story with diminishing returns — precisely because no one has come upon criminality in the decision-making.

By contrast, massive deletion of emails feeds suspicions of wrongdoing and provocative questioning: What did the chief executive know, and when did he (or she) know it?

Was former premier Dalton McGuinty in on the deletions? Was his successor, Kathleen Wynne, complicit? What incriminating clues did those emails contain? How far did the conspiracy go?

That’s the opposition storyline and they’re sticking to it — cheerfully sticking it to McGuinty and hoping it will stick to Wynne. But what does the Emailgate narrative really tell us?

The MPPs and Cavoukian have a point about improperly deleted emails. But the more the opposition makes of it, the less persuasive they sound.

In her damning report earlier this month, the information commissioner documented how McGuinty’s former chief of staff, David Livingston, sought the public service’s help in deleting emails (they refused); and how Craig MacLennan, chief at the energy ministry, cleaned out his inbox.

But when MPPs tried to draw her out on a bigger conspiracy, Cavoukian didn’t bite. And she disappointed them by stressing that Wynne’s government has been exemplary since taking over last February in adhering to email protocols.

McGuinty pushed back when he was hauled back by the committee later that day, arguing that the deletions were innocent housecleaning. But that doesn’t excuse top Liberal staffers wiping out entire inboxes, leaving virtually no trace of the information being sought by a legislative committee.

The story so far: A couple of Liberal politicos tried to cover their tracks by wiping out emails that were doubtless embarrassing. But incriminating?

Before holding out for any Emailgate bombshells, let’s remember what Gasgate was really about: As the 2011 election loomed, McGuinty panicked over local protests by cancelling the gas plants without giving a thought to the costs — just as the public and the opposition demanded. It was pure political opportunism, and voters rewarded him for his recklessness by re-electing him — then grumbling, in the aftermath, about unforeseen costs that we should have seen coming.

The Liberals kept lowballing the costs, promising relocation would be painless when everyone knew it would be ruinous. Or should have known.

With the cancellations, the public played dumb. With the deletions, the Liberals were too clever by half.

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We have only ourselves to blame for Gasgate. The Liberals can fault only themselves for Emailgate.

For all the fuss about these gates, it’s too late to close the door on escalating costs — which the public bought into. And you don’t need a secret email trail to tell you that.

https://www.thestar.com/authors.cohn_martin_regg.html Martin Regg Cohn’s END provincial affairs column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. mcohn@thestar.ca , http://twitter.com/reggcohn twitter.com/reggcohn END .

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