Wednesday 17 April 2013

Wynne pressured to come clean?
























Today, I bring you a very wishful article, verbatim by Rob Ferguson, a reporter for the Toronto Star entitled, 'Wynne pressured to come clean; Opposition parties ask premier to reveal cost of power plant scandal'. Considering the ridiculous notion just presented that it was all Mississauga taxpayers fault for a '$275,000,000 mistake by the lake', isn't it about time someone injected some sanity into the discussion? More on my response is below with room for your comment below that, unless you prefer to send an email but please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack others personally, and keep your language decent.
 
Premier Kathleen Wynne should stop hiding behind an auditor general's investigation and reveal the costs of scrapping an Oakville power plant before the 2011 election, opposition parties said Tuesday. The push intensified Tuesday as the government repeatedly refused to give a full accounting after auditor general Jim McCarter revealed the tab for axing a smaller plant in Mississauga was $275 million - 45 per cent higher than the Liberals claimed.

Wynne and Energy Minister Bob Chiarelli said they will wait until the auditor's office finishes a report on the Oakville move - which the government has said cost $40 million - by September. "It is simply not true that I have avoided, or that our government has avoided, getting the information out," the premier said in the legislature Tuesday. "What we need is the information ... that is compiled by the experts."



Challenging the Liberals to copy the auditor's Mississauga methodology, Progressive Conservative MPP and energy critic Vic Fedeli said figures revealed by the Ontario Power Authority last fall suggest scrapping Oakville and moving the plant to Napanee could skyrocket to $991 million. "Come clean, show us the number, tell us who ordered the coverup and this will be all over," Fedeli said.

The government is wasting time by "punting it off" to the auditor, charged NDP Leader Andrea Horwath.
Meanwhile, the former head of the civil service and an OPA vice-president of communications told a legislative committee probing the power plant scandal that the government should have known closure costs were going to be higher than claimed.



Shelly Jamieson, cabinet secretary until December 2011, said there were "buckets of costs" for things like natural gas shipments and extra transmission lines beyond the $40 million Oakville figure. The OPA's Kristin Jenkins said she doesn't know what the full tab on Oakville will be because engineering details are being finalized, but testified "there will be additional costs that have to be taken into account" in moving the plant to eastern Ontario.

Jenkins added she does not know why Energy Ministry bureaucrat Jesse Kulendran, a former Liberal staffer, recently denied ordering the OPA to withhold documents from MPPs probing the power plant cancellations.
"Ms. Kulendran gave us instructions on how to screen the documents," Jenkins said, only to learn later that "the approach Ms. Kulendran had told us to use was not in fact what the ministry had been using."
Opposition parties contend Kulendran's actions amounted to political interference.

 Jenkins provided the committee with notes she wrote on documents to explain their exclusion during a meeting with Kulendran. "We have her notes, we don't have Miss Kulendran's notes ... I think we can take what Ms. Jenkins said at face value," said Conservative MPP Rob Leone (Cambridge).



my response......
Energy Minister, Bob Chiarelli is proving to be as arrogant as his predecessor

when he obfuscates with his ministry's missteps while blaming Mississauga taxpayers for the cancellation of an ill-advised power plant that included a generous interest-free loan, an unverified penalty clause and an interest rate that would make a banker blush! 
For a government that has brought us e-health and ornge; to just name two boondoggles 'by not keeping their eye on the ball', turned us into a have not province, lost our prestigious credit rating, ramped up foreign borrowing to the stratosphere; mortgaging our grandchildren, has the time come for Premier Wynne to distance herself from the stench of the McGuinty years and call an election before one is forced on her?
                          -30-


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twitter chatter....
 
Wynne pressured to come clean? 
 
Will this happen any time soon? 
   
 
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