Hello,
I have been the Secretary of my OC for the past 15 years. I think your expectations of Committee members to keep records, let alone provide upon ransom request is wholly unrealistic. Being on the committee is an unpaid, often thankless position, held by a revolving door of owners with little experience in record keeping. You cannot compel anyone to spend their time sifting their email.
It is the Strata Managers responsibility to keep records. What has likely happened is the Strata Manager has changed, and the hard copy records were lost on the changeover from one strata manager to the next. I forced our Strata Manager to quit 12 years ago (long story). To recover the records I (alone) took half a day off work, drove across Sydney and spent an afternoon sifting through document boxes in the back of an office. If I had not done this, then all the records would have been lost. The outgoing (and now estranged) Strata Manager was certainly not going to spend hours finding and digitizing records. As Jimmy has said, its for reasons like this that compulsory retention of electronic records has been law over the last 5? years.
I would suggest that they need to personally go to the current (and previous if applicable) Strata Managers Office and obtain what they can themselves. All the best.