Mr. Martin (Winnipeg Centre, Man.) told The Hill Times he wants a government oversight panel he chairs in the House of Commons, the Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics Committee, to investigate government-wide information preservation systems after the RCMP initially failed to obtain the email records Mr. Harper’s (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) former PMO legal counsel, Benjamin Perrin, because the Privy Council Office allowed Mr. Perrin to delete the records when he left the PMO last April.
Mr. Perrin was closely involved in a plan Mr. Wright concocted and supervised to get Sen. Duffy to repay four years’ worth of impugned expenses to halt a ranging controversy over his housing and travel allowance. Mr. Perrin’s name is mentioned 24 times in an RCMP court document about the payment to Sen. Duffy, primarily in emails between Mr. Wright and Mr. Perrin and other PMO staffers.
When RCMP investigators sought email records for the PMO aides, they were informed by the PCO that Mr. Perrin’s emails were deleted when he left the PMO last March, under routine email destruction policies for government employees.
But after further inquiries by the RCMP last week, the Privy Council Office corrected itself, apologized, and told the Mounties Mr. Perrin’s email accounts had actually been preserved separately because of a separate court case involving the Human Resources and Social Development Department.
“We regret that we previously failed, even if inadvertently, to accurately inform you [the RCMP] and the PMO about the availability of Mr. Perrin’s emails,” said Isabelle Mondou, the assistant to Cabinet at the PCO, in a letter released last Sunday night. “We apologize for any inconvenience it may have caused.”
The unexpected development, while being a possible break for RCMP investigators probing the deal between Mr. Wright and Sen. Duffy, prompted opposition criticism in the House of Commons, with Liberal and NDP MPs suspicious that the original claim Mr. Perrin’s emails had been deleted was part of a government cover-up.
“It's pretty clear Perrin’s phantom emails were far more than grocery lists or an email from his wife telling him to pick up the kids,” Mr. Martin said Thursday. “They were profoundly important and it's appalling that PCO policy would have seen them erased.”
The Hill Timesreported on Thursday that an 80-page police affidavit, filed by RCMP Cpl. Greg Horton as he obtained a court order last month to obtain further emails and Sen. Duffy’s bank records, contains 24 references to Mr. Perrin.
His comments and those of others are contained primarily through his inclusion in email trails involving Mr. Wright, other PMO staffers, and the lawyer who negotiated the expense payment on Sen. Duffy’s behalf, Janice Payne.
Although Mr. Perrin’s emails were deleted on PCO servers and data bases, officials with Shared Services Canada, which maintains the government-wide network of computers and servers, told the Commons Government Operations Committee they were likely also stored on other backup systems, which allowed them to be retained for the other legal case.
“How do we know they’re not erasing all kinds of important but potentially embarrassing information, as a matter of course?” Mr. Martin said. “I’m pretty sure we'll find that the Perrin emails should never have been destroyed. The PCO information management protocol is just another illustration of just how deficient our access regime is.”
A top Privy Council Official told MPs on Tuesday it was up to Mr. Perrin to decide which of his emails should have been preserved.
“Employees have a responsibility to go through their records, make sure they keep those of archival value, if they are public servants, and have them to be able to be accessible pursuant to the Library and Archives Act, and [that] what remains is residual and not required to be kept,” PCO assistant deputy minister Michelle Doucet told the House Government Operations Committee.
“There are rules regarding what records can be kept and what records can be deleted,” Ms. Doucet said. “All public servants are expected to follow those rules.”
The head of Shared Services Canada, Liseanne Forand, told the committee public servants are required to ensure that “records of business value” are retained, but could not define what the term would mean within the Privy Council Office.
Another public servant with Shared Services Canada explained the department could have data, including emails, stored on several servers or backed up in a data centre.
Ms. Forand was unsure whether PCO could destroy emails on its own, or whether it would have to ask Shared Services Canada to do it.
“If there is something they want done on their systems, they can make a request to us,” Ms. Forand said.
Original Article
Source: hilltimes.com
Author: Tim Naumetz
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