Former B.C. staffer alleges Transportation Ministry destroyed emails

VICTORIA – A former executive assistant in the B.C. transportation minister's office says emails about government meetings over the Highway of Tears investigation into murdered and missing women were purposely deleted from his computer by a ministry official.

Tim Duncan says a ministerial assistant in Todd Stone's Victoria office ordered him to trash the material last November, but when he hesitated the assistant deleted them himself, saying, "you don't have to worry about it anymore."

Duncan says his concerns about the government deleting emails that had been requested in a freedom of information application were brushed aside by other officials.

The Opposition New Democrats released a letter of concern Duncan sent to British Columbia's Information and Privacy Commissioner Elizabeth Denham.

Stone says he is not aware of any practice in his office to delete emails that could become part of such requests, but he plans to advise his staff those actions are not permitted or tolerated.

Duncan, who was reached by phone for an interview, says he returned to Alberta after working barely six months in what he called the "cesspool that is the B.C. government."