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FOI legislation (every province has it, and Ontario’s is called the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act) had been around for decades by then, in Ontario since 1990.

It is a tool, primarily used by journalists and activists but sometimes political parties and citizens, meant to hold government accountable.

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And it enshrines government’s obligation to maintain certain kinds of records.

On Oct. 10, 2012, an official in McGuinty’s office sent out a note to about 20 staffers, including the most senior ones, asking them to do a search of their records for relevant information on Vapour and get back to him within two weeks.

David Livingston answered within hours the same day: “I have nothing responsive.”

Laura Miller answered on the last day, saying, “I have completed a search. I have no responsive emails.”

Yet as documents which are now an exhibit at Livingston and Miller’s criminal trial reveal, both of them had sent or received emails about Project Vapour. Livingston, for instance, just a month earlier, on Sept. 11, had written Energy Minister Chris Bentley, reassuring him that “There are lots of capable people engaged on the Vapour file…and we should let them do their work.”

And both he and Miller were copied on numerous “Project Vapour” emails in the months before the FOI request.

The emails are in 400 user-created files among a grand total of 632,000 files that were deleted on 20 computers in the office of the premier and later recovered by the Ontario Provincial Police, lawyers in the trial agreed in an admission.