There is a bad odour emanating from Queen’s Park and it’s growing more offensive by the day.
It is the stench of corruption.
While the Media Maggots and Vultures hover around Rob Ford, we have much more serious issues going on in the same city, which is the capital of what used to be one of the greatest provinces in the country.
The Privacy Commissioner found the Ontario Liberal Government guilty of deleting emails pertaining to the gas-plant seat-saver scandal.
Laws have been broken and many of the same crew are still in charge – including Premier Wynne who was part of that Cabinet. Dalton McGuinty still sits in the Legislature along with Brad Duguid whose staffers were named in the report.
To their credit, Star reporters and columnists do seem to be demonstrating a bit of outrage on this megascandal. Martin Regg Cohn has a great piece (You can’t rewrite history — or delete it). I don’t agree with everything he wrote but this line is a beaut:
Who knew that a gas plant cancellation, code-named “Project Vapour” would culminate with vapourized emails?
Unfortunately as the Privacy Commish noted there are no teeth in the laws that say you can’t delete emails that are really the property of the Province of Ontario – and hence the Ontario people.
So perhaps that is the first step – legislate some consequences for breaking the law.
Or maybe the real first step should be to call an election to clear the air and throw out the trash.
Will Andrea Horwath find the courage and integrity to make it so?
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Update
BREAKING: OPP to investigate deleted gas plant emails – Newstalk 1010
Outstanding article in the Ottawa Citizen – Liberals’ story on deleted emails remains beyond belief:
…Lately, there seems to be no shortage of political scandals to make us (more) cynical about government. But the provincial Liberals’ attempts to conceal their communications over the gas plants — and worse, insult our collective intelligence with their explanations about the lack of records — may do the most long-term damage to political engagement.
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But the escalating scandal surrounding the gas-plant cancellation is different. The cover-up feeds the public’s existing cynicism about how politicians operate. That’s not always fair, but this incident only serves to heighten suspicions that government operates in an aura of secrecy, within a cover-up culture…
This column by NP’s Scott Stinson is a MUST-READ! Ontario developed workaround for wage freeze in apparent attempt to mend fences with big unions (May be behind a paywall):
…when the LCBO settled with its employees just before the long weekend, with a deal offering signing bonuses and an eventual wage increase, PSAC’s Woodbine negotiators knew that they had effectively discovered a workaround for the Finance Ministry edict that did not allow for compensation increases.
Hold onto your wallets, Ontario Taxpayers!
