The Christmas break at Queen’s Park may well be the lull before the storm.

As the MPPs settle in for a winter break, the Ontario Provincial Police are beavering away on two investigations that could rock the Pink Palace and in particular the minority government as the province heads toward what could be a spring election.

First there is the ongoing criminal investigation into alleged kickbacks at ORNGE, which were at the centre of a Star investigation that led to the firing of founder Dr. Chris Mazza and its board.

While financial improprieties at ORNGE continue to dog the Liberals two years later, the more explosive probe — and the most damaging to the government — could prove to be the one investigating deleted gas plants emails.

“I genuinely believe a crime was committed,” said Tory MPP Vic Fedeli (Nipissing), who along with Tory MPP Rob Leone (Cambridge) called the OPP after a legislative committee probing the scandal discovered that emails about the decision to scrap the gas plants have been inadvertently or deliberately destroyed.

Fedeli said the opposition parties were having difficulty capturing the public’s imagination — despite raising the spectre of $1 billion being blown (which turned out to be true) — until the stories broke about the deleted emails.

“That was the day that the tide completely turned because a billion was too big to understand but putting your finger down on a delete key, you know that that’s wrong. That’s the day the tables turned and public attention was focused on the gas plants scandal,” Fedeli said.

OPP Commissioner Chris Lewis said there are no promises when the ORNGE investigation will be completed given the complexity of the international case. The case is being led by the OPP’s criminal investigation branch with support from the anti-rackets division.

“Investigators are dealing with the United States and Italy so it is very complex,” he said, adding that March would probably be the earliest before anything is revealed.

An OPP investigation is ongoing into a $4.7-million payment that one of Mazza’s companies received from an Italian firm that sold ORNGE 12 helicopters.

Mazza lost his job as CEO and president in early 2012 after the province made several decisions that caused ORNGE’s board to resign and most of the air ambulance firm’s top executives to be shown the door. ORNGE has gone through a top-to-bottom housecleaning since then.

With respect to the emails, Lewis said his force is investigating whether they were improperly destroyed.

“We haven’t determined that there was a criminal offence committed yet and if so by who,” the commissioner said, adding charges would be laid if and when that’s proven.

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NDP MPP Gilles Bisson (Timmins-James Bay) said Liberal staffers were even cavalier about destroying emails and documents when they appeared before the justice committee probing the Liberal government’s decision to scrap gas plants in Mississauga and Oakville, which according to the provincial auditor could cost up to $1.1 billion.

“Conveniently a whole bunch of emails and a whole bunch of documents and hard drives were wiped. That happened to be hard drives and emails of key witnesses that were going to testify before the justice committee with regard to the gas plants scandal,” he said.

“So this is potentially something that could be quite serious.”