Ontario can't recover emails deleted by senior staff - Really?

In an article in this week's Globe and Mail, Ontario's Privacy Commissioner, Ann Cavoukian, reported that senior staff members in the offices of both the Ontario energy minister and former premier Dalton McGuinty intentionally deleted emails about the cancellation of gas generating plants in Oakville and Mississauga. The Privacy Commissioner's report throws more gasoline on the fire of the political fallout from the gas generating plant cancellations.

The opposition, and for that matter many taxpayers, are up in arms over the deletion (read "cover-up") of senior staff emails regarding the cancellation of the gas generating plants.  Ann Cavoukian determined that senior Liberal staff in McGuinty's office broke the law by deleting all emails sent and received on this issue.

What concerns me more than the alleged cover-up is the idea that no one can recover the emails.  What happened to good old basic IT practices?  Most organizations that have email perform regular backups daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, and then send the back-up off site for secure storage.  

Can no-one at the Government of Ontario request recovery of emails from a backup?  Any organization that has an important need for transparency and security must go beyond basic data backup for emails. These organizations have email archival systems.  Email archival captures and stores email separately from the normal day-to-day email.  This ensures that the organization's email is always available: users can't delete archived emails. It is always there, searchable for e-discovery purposes.

Is IT governance absent from the Ontario government? What about all their other mission critical systems?

If the Ontario Government can't recover the deleted email of its senior staff, I think Ontario has bigger problems than its gas plant cancellations or even its burgeoning debt!