At Home in Hespeler

Stevie Cameron, where are you? Where is “On The Take II: Crime, Corruption and Greed in the McGuinty Years”? The elements are all there, the spending scandals piling up, even the traffic incident to throw in to somehow prove the other crimes.

First up is eHealth, in which McGuinty appointees and insiders where granted single source contracts and spent taxpayers money like drunken Chrétien era Liberals.

Then came the lotto file, where insiders where winning a statistically high number of big claims. Once eyes turned towards the Lotto Corp. it was soon discovered the board of the The Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation (OLG) thought their expense account was to cover any expense they might have, professional, personal or otherwise:

Dalton McGuinty: Sitting Down on the Job.

Your sister-in-law is having a housewarming and need a ’96 La Mondotte? No problem, that’s an expense; car broken down and, hey, I can’t get to work without a car. That’s an expense; just had a $3,713 meal (alcohol: $1458) and whoops! Left my personal credit card in my other pants. No problem, they accept Government of Ontario Diners Club card; damn grocery store is now charging a nickel for plastic bags and why should you have to fork over $1.12 for a cloth bag? Just expense it.

Bottom line, just over a week ago the whole board resigns, except for CEO Kelly McDougald who was dismissed with cause.

I won’t dwell on Michael Bryant, he wouldn’t otherwise belong, unless your spoofing Stevie Cameron’s book on the Mulroney years in which every irrelevant issue is used to prove what Cameron had no evidence for, that Mulroney was personally corrupt. Including in that evidence was Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs Bernard Valcourt, who had an impaired driving conviction in 1989 after a motorcycle accident that cost Valcourt an eye. So in the Cameron tradition, Bryant is evidence of criminality, corruption, an above the law attitude amongst McGuinyites (hey, this is Canada, it doesn’t have to be good journalism).

Which brings us to today:

The agency that assesses property values for homeowners in Ontario broke its own rules for hiring consultants and acquiring information technology systems, The Globe and Mail has learned.

The Municipal Property Assessment Corporation’s rules state that contracts with external consultants that are extended beyond their initial term cannot have a dollar value more than twice the amount of the original contract.

But an internal audit done by MPAC found the agency extended contracts to anywhere from five-to-14 times the initial value, for a total of $11.4-million, a revelation that suggests MPAC had been quietly grappling with some of the same issues over spending taxpayers’ money that have come to light at eHealth Ontario and the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp.

Of course, the issue was “problems with the agency’s procurement practices in 2005 and 2006,” and the “report is out of date.” In other words, “we already solved the problem.” But why are we only finding out about the problem now? And, of course, we’ve heard this song and dance before: past practices, new procedures. Which doesn’t explain why the lotto board resigned on masse or eHealth keeps coming back to haunt us like a bad Karl Heinz Schreiber movie.

That can only be explained by Dalton’s culture of corruption.

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Guess which car you’ll be forced to buy?

Now that Dalton McGuinty and Stephen Harper have bought us in to GM, it appears the government will spend our money giving us a rebate on a McCar. Want a car? How about this, buy a car that’s not even available yet, and we’ll throw in $10,000. The problem, besides the fact it’s not really Dalton’s money but mine and yours, is that GM is the only company close to having a viable electric car in the near future.

Those of you in favour of stimulus style spending, need to learn this lesson. Government spends the money, buys an asset, then encourages, pushes, legislates that we peons must buy that product. It is the nature of government. In this case, now that they have a stake in GM, they want you to buy GM. The words, in the public good will appear before long, and then any trampling of your freedom to choose will be fair game.

And if you build cars in Ontario, and didn’t need Dalton McHelp?

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