The governing Liberals suspect an angry mid-level bureaucrat is behind the leak of confidential documents to the Progressive Conservatives in a serious breach of budget secrecy.

Sources told the Star that senior officials in Premier Kathleen Wynne’s government believe a member of the Association of Management, Administrative and Professional Crown Employees of Ontario (AMAPCEO) union sent the Tories the 11-page “confidential advice to cabinet.” The union denied any link to the leak.

The Liberals have not yet decided whether to call the police to investigate.

“This information was given to us by civil servants — whistleblowers — who are concerned that you’re abusing your power as premier to put Liberal Party interests ahead of the interests of taxpayers or the civil service,” Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak thundered at the premier Tuesday in the legislature.

Wynne shot back: “It’s unfortunate that those confidential plans may have been released,” but emphasized the Liberals won’t change course on their budget plans.

The internal calendar — an early draft that has since been amended — shows the Liberals planned 39 different budget-related announcements over 27 days leading to the tabling of the budget on May 1.

That date is now in question and rattled government officials were huddling Tuesday to determine whether to delay it by a week to May 8.

Ontario budgets are traditionally released on Thursdays, but April 24 is out of the question due to Easter.

Timing is critical because if the minority Liberals’ spending plan is defeated in the legislature by the Tories and the New Democrats, Ontario would be plunged into a June election.

Against that backdrop, the finger-pointing for the source of leak has begun with a unionized government manager emerging as a possible suspect

AMAPCEO, which on Sunday voted 94 per cent in favour of a strike for the first time its history, represents 11,500 professional and supervisory Ontario government employees working in every ministry and many agencies, boards and commissions.

“Talks have not been going well,” a senior Liberal said hours after Hudak and Tory MPP Vic Fedeli (Nipissing) released the “communications rollout” of Finance Minister Charles Sousa’s May 1 spending plan.

AMAPCEO president Gary Gannage said, “in this environment you’re always looking for a scapegoat.

“I have no reason to think it’s AMAPCEO — AMAPCEO members are professionals. There’s a lot of disillusionment and anger in the Ontario public service right now,” said Gannage.

The crafting of the annual spending plan is shrouded in secrecy due to political and fiscal sensitivities.

Throughout the six weeks to two months of budget-making, Ontario Provincial Police officers patrol the Ministry of Finance’s Queen’s Park headquarters, the Frost Building, keeping an eye on bureaucrats and political aides.

The uniformed officers are there to ensure no confidential information is removed, though in the age of email and digital documents it’s more challenging to keep a lid on things.

While Fedeli refused to say exactly how many tipsters came forward to complain about the Grits, he said the party received the information “in the last week.”

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“In short, the information given to us . . . indicates that the Liberals have set up a top-secret working group within the Ministry of Finance, code named ‘BLT,’ and that’s short for ‘Budget Leaking Team,” he told reporters,

“The May 1 budget was also confirmed to us by multiple whistleblowers within the civil service,” the MPP said, urging the Liberals not to engage in a witch hunt for the whistleblowers’ identities.”

“This was brought to us. This is the brown envelope. This was not sought out. This was out of frustration of the people who work across the street (in the Frost Building) who have been forced to do the bidding for the Liberal Party of Ontario.”

Hudak said the information came from multiple sources. “It wasn’t just one brown envelope.”

But Liberal insiders said they believe there was only one leak, because the document in question is a digital draft that was circulated to more than a dozen people and could easily have been shared with others.

At the afternoon Liberal caucus meeting, MPPs were told the information was not intentionally shared by the government to divert attention from the gas-plants scandal.

Backbenchers routinely feel slighted when the premier or ministers divulge to the media policy announcements ahead of schedule.

But Tuesday’s episode appears to have had the opposite effect with Liberal MPPs confiding that they are glad Ontarians are talking about a saleable budget that they can take to voters if there’s a June election.

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath, whose party holds the balance of power in the legislature and has propped up the Liberals for the past two years, wouldn’t tip her hand on whether she will pull the plug and trigger that vote.

“I’ll judge a budget when I see it,” said Horwath.

“We’ll make a decision . . . when the budget’s been tabled in the legislature. Up until then there can be all kinds of speculation and all kinds of leaks.”

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