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This is how our government steals and cheats from us. Wynne’s Liberals are nincompoops

W

Wanker

Guest
TORONTO - Ontarians paid $1.9 billion for smart meters that weren’t so smart.
In fact, risky government schemes like the smart meters and the MaRS bailout have squeezed billions of dollars out of Ontarians’ pockets with no evidence that they got good value for their money, auditor general Bonnie Lysyk found in her annual report released Tuesday.

At the same time, almost as many people with developmental disabilities are waiting for service as are receiving it, and at the current placement pace it would take 22 years to clear the backlog for residential care even if no one else applied during that time.
Lysyk’s report also noted that oversight of licensed child-care sites came up short, with half the centres surveyed unable to prove that all their staff had required background checks.

Meanwhile, the government’s much-hyped public-private infrastructure projects have been a very pricy choice for taxpayers.
Ontarians are spending $8 billion more on 74 projects than if they had been delivered by the public sector, Lysyk said.
Infrastructure Ontario’s most infamous loan — $235 million to the controversial MaRS Phase 2 building project — has “uncertain” value for taxpayers and creates the perception of a bailout to a U.S.-based private-sector developer, the auditor concluded.

Lysyk expressed special “concern” over the province’s level of debt, which is growing at a faster rate than the economy.
Even if the Kathleen Wynne government meets its goal of balancing the books in 2017-18, the province will have put $325 billion on the public credit card or $23,000 for every single resident of Ontario.

“That’s a heavy load,” Lysyk said, urging the government to assess more carefully the benefits of investments before cracking open the public purse.
On smart meters, auditors concluded that the rollout cost $1.9 billion — or $81 to $544 per meter — but the expected benefits to hydro customers have not been realized.
Lysyk said the meters have not reduced people’s bills, moved power usage off peak times or lowered the need for more generation.

Energy Minister Bob Chiarelli and Economic Development Minister Brad Duguid came out swinging after the report’s release, challenging the auditor’s numbers and conclusions.
Chiarelli said the smart meters only cost $1.4 billion and are invaluable in achieving conservative goals.

The auditor also noted that Ontario exported electricity at a $2.6-billion loss between 2006 and 2013, even as hydro customers spent an extra $50 billion since 2006 topping up power costs above market rate through the global adjustment fee.

On private-public sector partnerships, Lysyk said the government may have spent too much building massive projects because it failed to assess the true cost of private sector financing.
Duguid said public-private partnerships are a net gain to the taxpayer because the risk of cost overruns that are significant in many large-scale public sector projects are not assumed by the taxpayer.

In another shocking auditor finding, the province doesn’t know how many residents are immunized for diseases such as measles, and child immunization rates are below the level necessary to prevent transmission of disease.
Questionable flu vaccination billings were highlighted, as taxpayers paid 21,000 times to have physicians and pharmacists vaccinate the same person twice.
A vaccination registry being implemented by the Ontario government is $85 million over budget and may not provide the data necessary to identify areas with low immunization coverage rates, the report said.

Inaccurate ordering of vaccines in 2012-13 meant $3-million worth expired before it could be used.
Ontario also has no process in place to ensure that new adult immigrants are immunized before or just after arriving in the province, the report found.
Defined benefit pension plans in Ontario are increasingly underfunded, now short $75 billion, the report also said.
The number crunchers noted that the province spends less than most other jurisdictions on community supervision programs so the fact that reoffending rates haven’t dropped shouldn’t come as a real surprise.

AG REPORT HIGHLIGHTS:

  • Province’s debt on track to hit $325 billion, or $23,000 for every Ontarian
  • The rate of adult reoffending has gone up, higher-risk offenders under supervised
  • Licensed child-care operators don’t report all serious occurrences, inspections late
  • Vast majority of Ontario’s defined pension plans underfunded
  • Ontario health officials don’t know how many people immunized for diseases such as measles
  • The $1.9-billion Smart Meter rollout yet to justify cost to hydro customers
  • Key recommendation in Walkerton tainted water inquiry still not implemented 14 years later
  • Ontario spending $8 billion more than needed on 74 public-private infrastructure projects
  • MaRS Phase 2 loan a financial risk to taxpayers
  • No co-ordinated system in place to deliver palliative care services to the dying
  • Immigration selection program seriously flawed, no ban for fraudulent applicants
  • Wait list for developmental disability services almost as long as those served
  • Nomination papers to apply for federal



https://www.torontosun.com/2014/12/09/ontario-auditor-bonnie-lysyk-releases-annual-report


In the wake of Ontario auditor general Bonnie Lysyk’s report on the wanton spending of the Kathleen Wynne government, we have to ask one question.
Is there anything the Liberals spend our money on that doesn’t turn into a financial sinkhole?

In Lysyk’s latest report on government misspending, the Liberals’ smart meter, MaRS and other public-private partnership fiscal disasters, in which billions of tax dollars have been wasted, join a long list of previous fiscal disasters documented by the AG’s office.

These include the Liberals’ eHealth, Ornge, gas plants and Green Energy Act spending disasters.
These latest revelations by the auditor general come just 24 hours after the Liberals unveiled legislation to create an Ontario pension plan by raiding the pocketbooks of millions of workers and their employers, while simultaneously lecturing them about not saving enough for their retirement.

This incredible Liberal arrogance — this abject Liberal failure to understand the depths of their own financial incompetence — would be hilarious if it wasn’t so frightening.
Are these financial nincompoops really the people we want imposing a new payroll tax on us to fund their pie-in-the-sky pension plan?

As Lysyk noted, “Ontario’s debt continues to grow faster than the province’s economy, which could have negative implications for the province’s finances ... No matter which measure you use — total debt, net debt or accumulated deficit — this is a concern for the province for several reasons, including how much money will be available for providing services to Ontarians in future years after interest on debt is paid ...

“Although the government projects that it will not have a deficit in 2017/18, until then, it will still need to borrow to finance annual deficits, fund infrastructure investments and re-finance existing debt.

“We project that by the time the annual deficit is eliminated in 2017/18, the net debt will stand at about $325 billion. That’s about $23,000 for every single resident of Ontario.”
Got that? Even in the unlikely event the Liberals fulfill their promise to balance the budget by 2017, they will have more than doubled the debt in just 14 years.
Now they want to create a new pension plan on the backs of workers and employers.
Gee, what could possibly go wrong?





 

Oilcan

Senior Member
Joined May 4, 2011
Messages 621
3AXbJ1K.jpg
 

lovelatinas

Senior Member
Joined Mar 18, 2010
Messages 1,702
All parties are wasteful I know. The question is which party you do like the most to waste your money? I prefer any party that wastes my tax money over a party that imposes it's morale into law.
 

Madman

Reviewer
Joined Aug 12, 2011
Messages 17,534
But aren't they all imposing their morals on us via law. Liberals want to control how you run a business or what you consume and conservatives want to tell you what you can do in your bedroom.

I want a party that will just leave us the hell alone....The government's job is just to make sure that each of us has our liberty (protect us from oppression from outside sources, protect us from false dealings, protect or freedoms to speak, pray, not pray, whatever). It is not there to save us from ourselves....from bad habits like smoking or prostitution....or from laziness, incompetence or bad life choices.

I'd vote for you , now can you please take care of the grievances piling up.
 
W

Wanker

Guest
Premier Kathleen Wynne’s government was finally shamed last week into agreeing to allow Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk to assess $3.74 million in secret payments to some Ontario teacher unions.

We trust Lysyk will get to the bottom of these payments, which were reportedly made to the unions to cover their negotiating expenses with the government.

To date, the Liberals have been up to their old tricks of denying, deflecting and diverting.
In one minute they claimed they didn’t need receipts from the unions when they doled out the money because they knew it was for things like hotel rooms and pizzas.

In the next, after the manure hit the fan, that did an about face and said they would be asking for documentation from the unions that they never asked for when they gave the cash out.

The Liberals claim the payments were necessary because of the complicated negotiating process they themselves created.
But will they now give Lysyk access to all the information and documents she needs to make an informed assessment about whether taxpayers received good value for money with these secret payments?

As we saw in the billion-dollar cancelled gas plants scandal, the Liberals aren’t exactly forthcoming with information and documentation when it makes them look bad.

Lysyk’s findings are scheduled for spring, but in our view what the Liberals did here in concert with some teacher unions is already a significant scandal.

The fact the unions that received $3.7 million going back to 2008 have donated nearly $800,000 to the Ontario Liberals in the past decade, plus spent millions of dollars on election attack ads against the Liberals’ main opponents — the Conservatives — creates a clear perception of a conflict of interest.

The Liberals and the unions can complain all they want that the suggestion of such a quid pro quo is outrageous and offensive.
The fact remains that when the province engages in negotiations with organizations involving the spending of billions of dollars of public money, the conduct of both parties must be above reproach and be seen to be above reproach.

That these payments were made in secret until uncovered by the Globe and Mail is enough to raise alarm bells on its own.

The perception of a conflict, given the partisan history of the teacher unions’ involvement in Ontario election campaigns by running attack ads against the Conservative leader, which benefits the Liberals, is obvious.

We’re not suggesting what’s been going on is illegal.
We’re saying it should be illegal.

Equally alarming is the fact that it’s reached the point in Ontario where, in order to trust anything the Liberals say, it has to be verified by an independent officer of the Legislature like the auditor general.

In other words, you can only trust the Liberals as far as you can audit them.

https://www.torontosun.com/2015/11/07/why-did-liberals-secretly-pay-unions
 

Swagger

Senior Member
Joined Mar 16, 2011
Messages 632
All you need to know.

The fact the unions that received $3.7 million going back to 2008 have donated nearly $800,000 to the Ontario Liberals in the past decade, plus spent millions of dollars on election attack ads against the Liberals’ main opponents — the Conservatives — creates a clear perception of a conflict of interest.
 

SQUISH

Well-known member
Joined Aug 13, 2012
Messages 260
Don’t trust Liberals, audit them


This is why I don’t believe anything the Ontario Liberals have to say about education spending, including details of their latest tentative agreement with the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario (ETFO).

Remember how former premier Dalton McGuinty and Premier Kathleen Wynne insisted that, as far as they knew, the cost to the public when the Liberals cancelled two gas plants to save a handful of Liberal seats in the 2011 election was $190 million for the cancelled Mississauga plant and $40 million for the cancelled Oakville one?

Remember how auditors general Jim McCarter and Bonnie Lysyk eventually put the cost at up to $1.1 billion?

Remember how Wynne, after she became premier, claimed to have brought about a new era of labour peace with the teacher unions by talking nicely to them?

Remember how it turned out that, according to Lysyk, Wynne had in fact made $468 million in concessions to the teacher unions in order to buy that labour peace?

Remember how, when the Globe and Mail revealed the Liberals paid millions of dollars to teacher and education worker unions (excepting ETFO) to cover their
negotiating costs, Education Minister Liz Sandals said the government didn’t need receipts because it already knew the cost of hotel rooms and pizza?

Remember how Wynne then blew Sandals out of the water by saying the government would ask the unions for receipts retroactively?

That’s why I take with a huge grain of salt Sandals’ denial Monday of a report that, as part of its tentative deal with ETFO, the Liberals will pay $600,000 for occasional teacher training in health and safety, workplace violence and related matters.

Just as I take with a grain of salt assurances from Sandals that despite the fact that all Ontario teachers are getting raises in these contracts, the total amount paid will be “net zero,” whatever that means.

To me, it seems pretty logical that the more money you pay teachers — many of whom are earning north of $90,000 a year — the less money there is for everything else in education.

But the more important lesson is that, through their example over the years, the Liberals have shown that the only way to get to the bottom of what they’re actually spending on anything is by auditing them.

In that context, the only person I trust is Lysyk, the auditor general, on whatever the hell it is the Liberals have been spending our money on in negotiations with the teacher unions.

She’ll be reporting on this in the spring.

Until then, I don’t believe anything the Liberals have to say.

Given their record, neither should you.

https://www.torontosun.com/2015/11/09/dont-trust-liberals-audit-them
 

train

Reviewer
Joined Apr 19, 2010
Messages 1,953
Why do people in the GTA turn such blind to this Liberal government? It has consistently been the most corrupt and incompetent provincial government in Canada. Being bought and paid for by the Teacher Unions in a shocking breech of trust is only latest of a long list of sins over the 10 years.
 

Macho Man

Senior Member
Joined May 21, 2011
Messages 1,309
Why do people in the GTA turn such blind to this Liberal government? It has consistently been the most corrupt and incompetent provincial government in Canada. Being bought and paid for by the Teacher Unions in a shocking breech of trust is only latest of a long list of sins over the 10 years.

Something we debate over drinks and none can come up with a reasonable sane answer.
 

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