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Dalton McGuinty, gas plant cancellation scandal, national Post, Ontario energy policy, Rex Murphy
From the weekend edition of The National Post, Rex Murphy‘s summary of Duplicitous Dalton and the havoc wreaked up Ontario taxpayers. Who pays for all this “venality” Murphy asks: “the honest pockets of carpenters in North bay and teaching assistants and snow plow operators and store clerks and seniors…”
The horrible truth is, Ontarians are continuing to pay for the disastrous McGuinty energy policies as approvals of giant wind power projects continues, and subsidies are doled out by the million each week.
Wonder how Ottawa South voters are feeling about John Fraser this week…
Rex Murphy: Duplicitous Dalton, Inc.
The Auditor-General of Ontario has released her report on the provincial Liberal government’s brazenly political decision to cancel two gas-fired power plants. Her estimate of the ultimate cost: about $1.1-billion, potentially reaching $1.5-billion. This obscenity of mismanagement and prevarication came out of Duplicitous Dalton, Inc., a.k.a. the McGuinty government, an administration we now know was, politically, so venal as to toss perhaps as much as a billion and a half taxpayer dollars into the devouring — but politically favourable — wind.
Kelly McParland: Here lies the wreckage of Dalton McGuinty’s self-serving gas plant decisions
In contemplating the disastrous consequences of the Ontario government’s two arbitrary gas plant closures, it does well to remember the performance put on by then-premier Dalton McGuinty before his abrupt resignation.
Never hesitant to play the Boy Scout, the premier prorogued the legislature rather than face questions about the gas plants, and then piously sought to blame the opposition for his troubles.
“I prorogued because the place was becoming overheated,” Mr. McGuinty insisted, citing a “spurious, phoney” suggestion that his energy minister had been in contempt of the legislature for failing to produce documents related to the scandal.
D.D., Inc. even had the brass to insist, originally, that the cost to cancel just the Oakville, Ont., plant was only $40-million. The Auditor-General this week, after a cautionary distribution of Gravol tablets to the assembled press, offered a more altitudinous range of $675-million to $810-million — 15 to 20 times as much! And from the very beginning of the noxious affair, to any question the Liberal response was delay, obfuscate, stone-wall, delete emails, deny said deletions, miraculously locate the not-so-deleted emails, and, of course, insult and hector any and all critics.
Let there be no more “used car salesmen” jokes about political leaders. Used car salesmen are pillars of candour and conscience compared to this lot.
They knew $40-million was a joke estimate from the moment they scrambled to “buy” the votes by scrapping the plant — in other words, from the moment they chose to buy a couple of ridings by ripping up contracts, costs be damned.
Read the whole article here.
Ottawa Wind Concerns 