Unanswered questions that remain after the Coutts prosecution email search
CBC
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith continued to face pressure this week from the Opposition NDP in connection to a January story from CBC News.
Based on information from well-placed sources, CBC reported in January that a staff member in Smith's office sent a series of emails to the Alberta Crown Prosecution Service that challenged prosecutors' assessment of and direction on cases tied to last winter's border protests at Coutts, Alta.
CBC News has not seen the emails.
"Why is it that this premier is held to a lower ethical standard than that which was applied to Minister [Kaycee] Madu, after he engaged in what was found to be interference with the administration of justice?" Opposition Leader Rachel Notley asked Tuesday.
Smith, in response, said such interference "never occurred."
"We did a major investigation by the independent public service over the course of a weekend where they did a full review of all of the emails that had been sent and received out of my office as well as to Crown prosecutors and found nothing," Smith said.
The premier's office described the original reporting as "defamatory" and said it contained "baseless allegations."
CBC News stands by the reporting. CBC News knows the names of the confidential sources, knows where they work, and has carefully assessed the credibility of the information offered.
Days after the story was published, the provincial government conducted a search over the course of a weekend. The province's justice ministry said the search of nearly a million emails had "not generated any records of contact."
Nearly two months after that review, the scope of that search, and what it may have left behind, leaves questions unanswered.
CBC News reached out to Alberta Justice communications director Charles Mainville for answers on these questions on Wednesday, with a deadline for a response by the end of the day.
Receiving no response, CBC News reached out on Thursday to the premier's press secretary, Rebecca Polak, and Jonah Mozeson, executive director of communications and planning in the premier's office, with another deadline for the end of the day. No response was received by publication time.
The province has said it has a retention period of 30 days for deleted emails. However, it also says that once an email is deleted by a user, it would still be accessible for 30 additional days. That's a total of 60 days.
The government's email search took place Jan. 20-22.
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