Re: BC NDP Candidate A Former CCP Memeber

[Anonymous]

Not to ignore seoulbro and Zetsu, here is something about the inept McGimpy government and it's disastrous "green energy" failures.

Dalton McGuinty's testimony before the gas plants committee Tuesday morning would be funny if it weren't so tragic. But that's kind of the truth about all recent government scandals.

 

The most fiery exchange with the former Ontario premier was his back and forth with PC MPP Vic Fedeli ­— the latter repeatedly asking when McGuinty learned the true cost to cancel the plants was more than the $40 million they'd been running with; McGuinty never giving a straight answer.

 

Yet the true price — now at least half a billion — and McGuinty's mental timeline are really side issues. Outrageously expensive, for sure, but not getting at the root of the problem.

 

Why was a project so massively structured in a way that it's even open to being cancelled on a whim? Partisan gains aside, who in their right mind makes such a serious decision as cancelling an energy plant on the eve of an election? Who makes such a decision without knowing the costs, especially when they're at least in the tens of millions?

 

The main issue is that these days, politicians seem to take for granted that they can start, stop and tweak massive spending projects so willy-nilly that it's akin to blindly throwing darts and seeing where they land. When they're challenged on this approach, they're taken off guard, because it's now just part of the culture.

 

Ontario's current premier Kathleen Wynne has promised it won't happen again. Well of course it won't. We'd have to be living in the most irreparable kleptocracy ever for this to recur.

 

But the problem is that something similar will erupt ­— just over a different project. Like with Ornge. Like with eHealth. The approach to arm's-length projects enables this; and remember the gas plants fall under the Ontario Power Authority. Politicians get brownie points for claiming they've created agencies to solve problems, but distance themselves once projects sour.

 

It'll keep happening until we change our political culture. Right now in Canada the entrenched political class has positioned itself as opposed to the public interest. A detailed reading into spending scandals makes this clear.

 

They are far more interested in self-preservation than public service. They are too inept or lazy to succeed in the private sector, so they enter politics where buzzwords and wishful thinking are actually acceptable rationales to approve big-ticket spending.

 

The above is what went on in almost every spending concern of late, regardless of varying scopes and legal statuses. Documents showing B.C. Premier Christy Clark's staff wanted to use taxpayer resources to apologize to ethnic communities for past wrongs not because they inherently believed in it, but to win votes.

 

All the questions arising from Tony Clement's "gazebo" financing. The endless pork-barrel spending not unique to the current government, but certainly going strong under the Conservatives. The Charbonneau commission exploring allegations Montreal is plagued with the rewarding of bloated construction contracts to organized crime. All the money down the drain from the federal Liberal sponsorship program.

 

McGuinty's testimony is funny because he had the gall to say at his appearance that those involved in the gas plants fiasco hold a "noble idea of public service," that certain mistakes can be chalked up to being "caught between two competing principles," as if their downfall was their being too virtuous.

 

It's tragic because his words and actions are actually in line with how Canadian politics is now done.

http://www.edmontonsun.com/2013/05/07/scandal-the-new-normal">http://www.edmontonsun.com/2013/05/07/s ... new-normal">http://www.edmontonsun.com/2013/05/07/scandal-the-new-normal

McGuinty has the nerve to call his green energy disasters a "noble idea of public service". He is the worst premier of a Canadian province since Bob Rae. Ontarians are all a lot poorer because he wants to make a name for himself with greenies.