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In the case of Bain, who was hired at a later date, the only record returned was the human resources forms he completed to authorize his pay in January 2018.

The premier’s deputy minister and head of the civil service, Don Wright, confirmed the deletions.

“As staff learned their roles and responsibilities, there may have been some instances of best practises not being followed,” Wright said in a statement. “Staff have since received training and are taking a more cautious approach to the management of email.

“While we are not aware of any specific records being handled in a way that violates policy, my office will be reviewing email records for this time period and restore any records if necessary.”

The deleted records are similar to email management problems experienced by the previous Liberal government, which was accused of routinely labelling important documents as routine “transitory” records and then bulk deleting them. The Liberals were also found to have “triple-deleted” some emails to ensure those records were scrubbed and inaccessible to the public under FOI.

The NDP when it was in opposition in 2015 tried to get records of emails from then premier Christy Clark’s chief of staff and deputy chief of staff, only to receive a few heavily-censored emails.

“I think all British Columbians should be concerned when their government hides things from them,” Horgan said at the time in 2015, adding it was “inconceivable” any staff would just delete all their emails. “The whole point of having access to information is so we can all make reasonable judgments about the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of our political leadership.”