The auditor general says the Harper government misinformed Parliament to win approval for a $50-million G8 fund that lavished money on dubious projects in a Conservative riding. And she suggests the process may have been illegal. The findings are contained in a confidential report Sheila Fraser was to have tabled in Parliament on April 5.
The report was put on ice when the Harper government was defeated and is not due to be released until after the May 2 election. However, a Jan. 13 draft of the chapter on the G8 legacy infrastructure fund was seen by The Canadian Press. It reveals that Industry Minister Tony Clement, the mayor of Huntsville, and the general manager of Deerhurst Resort chose the 32 projects that received funding — with no regard for the needs of the summit or the conditions laid down by the government.
According to Harper "the manager of Deerhurst Resort is very capable of choosing which projects to fund with G8 money." really? Since when, especially when much of the money was used to upgrade his resort, getting it ready for sale.
On Twitter: "Newsflash: Harper announces "it was only $50 million, plus it's Tony's fault" on alleged misspending of G8 fund". Typical. Blame someone else. I thought he was supposed to have a steady hand on everything.
And while the Conbots are joining the Tea Party 'birthers', because of an old article suggesting that Michael Ignatieff may have voted in the British elections (who cares?), Kady O'Malley tweets: "Okay, I'd say @M_Ignatieff's voting record prolly a little less relevant than the govt allegedly misleading Parliament on G8 funds."
With a $50 million gift of taxpayers money, the Deerhurst Resort's owners are now hoping to cash in big time.
And they owe it all to Tony Clement.
Hope he at least gets a nice meal out of it.
Deerhurst was briefly put on the market for sale in 2008, the year of the financial market crash before the listing was pulled. This time around it doesn’t hurt that images of Deerhurst have been sent around the globe during last month’s G8 Summit gathering of top world leaders. During the meeting, an eight kilometre wire fence was installed around the resort for security.
The property may also be attractive to a buyer because of more than $50 million worth of infrastructure improvements in the Muskoka area to prepare for the visit.
“The majority of the on-site government budget was event-based and temporary,” she said, adding an undisclosed amount of government money was spent “to ensure all 10 leaders’ suites were identical and to reconfigure a ballroom half-wall slightly to allow for the division of the space.”
Still, the spending associated with hosting the government summit pumped at least $50-million into infrastructure projects in the area to prepare for the world leaders’ visit. The improvements included the repaving of Deerhurst Road, improvement of the region’s power grid and enhanced cellphone coverage.
There is no such thing as government money. That is our money Clement gave you to spruce up the place.
So much for austerity. I'll be following this story and I think the ethics commissioner should get involved. That Clement is a sly one.
This sounds a bit like the Adams Mines story when he was in the Ontario cabinet, that involved the Cortellucci-Montemarano Group. Mike Harris eventually was forced to resign over it.
During last year's Tory leadership campaign, the Cortellucci-Montemarano Group contributed $44,600 to Mr. Eves through seven subsidiaries and $40,000 to Ms. Witmer through six subsidiaries. Enterprise Minister Jim Flaherty received $46,000, Health Minister Tony Clement $40,000 and Mr. Stockwell $15,000. (Government accused of secret land deal, By Richard Mackie, The Globe and Mail May 8, 2003)
Clearly not having embarrassed us enough by winning the Colossal Fossil award at Copenhagen, our new and improved "go green" dictator is pulling out all the stops to make Canada look like complete idiots for the G8 and G20.
The international media is having a ball lampooning us and I'm sure many in the foreign press are looking forward to visiting "fake lake" just so they can share our incompetence with their readers.
And leaders of other countries will be able to use this as a benchmark for decades. "We may waste taxpayer's money, but remember Canada in 2010?" They'll be able to get away with anything.
Conservative ministers argue the government would be remiss if it didn’t try to sell Muskoka as a tourist destination to the 3,000-odd international journalists trapped covering the summits from Toronto. True, but do the math — for the cost of the fake lake, the government could have given every foreign journalist a free weekend in the real Muskoka. But that’s not the end of fiscal follies summit-style. Down the hall from Loonie Lake in the Toronto media centre, taxpayers are being hit up yet again, this time for something called “The Living Wall.” Summit organizers are contracting a massive wall of pre-cultivated plants that come with their own irrigation system.
This, we are told in government documents, will be the G20 summit’s “signature environmental project.” ... (Speaking of legacy, Toronto taxpayers will have to take care of this vertical flowerbed for the next century). How much The Living Wall will end up costing Canadian taxpayers is anyone’s guess. With two weeks to go before the structure has to be in full bloom, the summit management office sent us a note saying it still had no cost estimates for the project. Likely translation: The bill for this thing is too outrageous for publication.
I hope this fake lake has a fake bridge so that we can all jump off it.
... taxpayers are shelling out $207,000 for 15 of what have to be the world’s most expensive solar lights to illuminate the pathways at Deerhurst Resort, where the eight leaders are staying for one night. While it is hard to believe this five-star resort had no path lights of its own, the federal contract assures us “this signature environmental project will contribute to the overall greening of the G8 summit.” And when the leaders have left the next day, the contractors have to dismantle the six-metre lights, and reinstall them somewhere in the nearby town of Huntsville. Your tax dollars at work over and over.
From Colossal Fossil to Colossal Idiot. I'm so proud.
So much for accountability. The Harper government is obviously trying to win the award as the most corrupt, unaccountable government in the history of our country.
Shouldn't someone tell them they've already won?
We can't afford having them working so hard.
Canadians may never know how much taxpayers shelled out to American-owned Deerhurst Resort in Huntsville to play host to G8 leaders in June. The Harper government recently released hundreds of pages of details on how it spent $857 million at the G8 and G20 summits. But millions of dollars of expenses were blacked out in the documents and further inquiries reveal the federal Conservatives have no plans to divulge these payments to real estate giants, construction companies and resort owners.
If you're looking for an investment tip. I'd go with black magic markers.
A made a New Years top ten list of Conservative misdeeds, but have since received several other important ones, that should have been included. (I also have more than a hundred of my own)
So I decided to make additional lists, because when you put everything together, they are quite shocking, and paint a picture of a government that is not only corrupt, but terrifying.
So if you don't see yours here, it's coming. I'm just doing a bit more research.
And again, David Letterman style, beginning with the last.
10. Conservative cabinet minister Bev Oda racked up $5,475 in limo fees in four days, after her own ministry at the time, had just seen its funding slashed. David Akin called it a "limousine addiction." She claimed to have reimbursed the treasury for some of the expense, but this was not reflected in the disclosure. And even after getting caught with her hands in the cookie jar, labelled "taxpayer money", she continued to travel in style. This guy even wrote a song about it. Catchy.
9. Louis Ranger had been a public servant for 35 years, when he locked horns with John Baird over improper targeting of stimulus money. He was pushed out of the job and told, “We don’t want your advice” regarding the spending projects [infrastructure]. Indeed, the woman who is the ADM in charge of the file has been specifically told by the Minster’s [John Baird] office, “We don’t want your advice; we want you to do as you’re told.”
Ranger said of Baird: "As a long time bureaucrat, I am used to dealing with politicians who revel in self-interest. Baird however, is the nastiest, most partisan creature to have ever run a large department. What is best for Canada isn’t even remotely of interest to him - what is best for his party and his own political ambitions drives his agenda entirely."
8. In 2009, Jason Kenney's office barred British MP George Galloway from Canada because he had provided humanitarian aid to Palestine. We have since learned that the decision was that of Kenney's assistant and communications director, Alykhan Velshi:
From the first e-mail that Mr. Kenney’s communications director, Alykhan Velshi, sent on March 16, 2009, at 2:09 p.m. to immigration bureaucrats – the subject line was “inadmissible” – only 102 minutes passed before an official in the National Security section of the CBSA had agreed that Mr. Galloway should be barred for being a member of a terrorist organization. ...It was Mr. Kenney’s communications’ aide, Mr. Velshi, who set the wheels in motion a few days before, on March 16.
He sent an e-mail at 2:09 p.m. to the Immigration Department’s director-general of communications, Edison Stewart, saying he had a media call asking “why we’re letting in the following person even though he’s publicly called for money to go to a banned terrorist entity in Canada [Hamas] and that makes him inadmissible.”
Velshi is a player in the American neoconservative movement, and includes among his colleagues the late Irving Kristol, Andrew C. McCarthy, Lynn and Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, etc. He belongs to the neoconservative foreign policy group: American Enterprise Institute and Foundation for Defense of Democracies. In the November 17, 2003, issue of The American Conservative, they described the origins of FDD:
In early 2001, a tightly knit group of billionaire philanthropists conceived of a plan to win American sympathy for Israel's response to the Palestinian intifada. They believed that the Palestinian cause was finding too much support within crucial segments of the American public, particularly within the media and on college campuses, so they set up an organization ... to offer Israel the kind of PR that the Israeli government seemed unable to provide itself.
Jason Kenney only has a high school education, so we shouldn't be too surprised that someone else is making most of the decisions. Apparently Velshi was also behind the Canadian Arab Foundation losing their funding and the U.S. war resisters being deported. Kenney is Immigration Minister in name only. The department is being run primarily by the American Neoconservatives.
7. The late Chuck Cadman was a Conservative MP, who while dying of cancer, was approached by two of Harper's operatives: Doug Finley (now a patronage appointed senator) and Tom Flanagan. Their visit was to bribe Cadman with a one million dollar life insurance policy in exchange for his vote to topple the Martin government. Harper was caught on tape admitting that there were "financial considerations" made, but then later said the tape had been doctored. It wasn't.
In a democratic country, trying to buy a vote is a very serious offense. But in Harperland, it's business as usual. He still has not been held to account. Instead he sued the Liberals until they no longer had money to defend themselves, so had to agree not to discuss the matter again. And that's what passes for democracy in Harper's world.
6. Conservative MP Gary Lunn was investigated for collusion charges pertaining to the 2008 election.
Five months after voting day, questions remain about the role third-party advertising played in Saanich-Gulf Islands, where five previously unheard of groups bought ads to support Lunn. Lunn was natural resources minister at the time, but after the election was demoted to a minister of state position. Four of the groups shared a financial agent, Van Isle Marina owner Mark Dickinson, and were registered out of the legal office of Lunn associate and Victoria lawyer Bruce Hallsor. Hallsor was vice-president of the Conservative's electoral district association for Saanich-Gulf Islands at the time, and remains on the EDA executive in an "election readiness" position.
Could charges be pending? Let's hope. A simple demotion is not good enough. We're still paying his salary.
Deerhurst was briefly put on the market for sale in 2008, the year of the financial market crash before the listing was pulled. This time around it doesn’t hurt that images of Deerhurst have been sent around the globe during last month’s G8 Summit gathering of top world leaders. During the meeting, an eight kilometre wire fence was installed around the resort for security. The property may also be attractive to a buyer because of more than $50 million worth of infrastructure improvements in the Muskoka area to prepare for the visit.
“The majority of the on-site government budget was event-based and temporary,” she said, adding an undisclosed amount of government money was spent “to ensure all 10 leaders’ suites were identical and to reconfigure a ballroom half-wall slightly to allow for the division of the space.” Still, the spending associated with hosting the government summit pumped at least $50-million into infrastructure projects in the area to prepare for the world leaders’ visit. The improvements included the repaving of Deerhurst Road, improvement of the region’s power grid and enhanced cellphone coverage.
"An undisclosed amount of government money"? There is no such thing as "government money". That is our money.
The Bank of Montreal is accusing Calgary Conservative MP Devinder Shory of having ties to what is believed to be Canada's largest mortgage fraud.The bank has filed a lawsuit against hundreds of Albertans, including Shory. Civil court documents filed in the lawsuit, and obtained exclusively by CBC News, allege Shory, a lawyer, executed legal transactions that misrepresented the true mortgage owner of at least five Calgary properties.
Ironically it came to light shortly after Minister of Justice, Rob Nicholson, and Natural Resources Minister, Christian Paradis, announced legislation to establish mandatory jail time for fraud over $1 million and to "help ensure the voices of victims are heard when white-collar criminals are sentenced to jail." Let's see if they put their money where their mouths are, though Paradis is in a bit of trouble himself.
3. Stephen Harper used a loophole in the law to allow mining companies to turn Canadian lakes into toxic dump sites.
CBC News has learned that 16 Canadian lakes are slated to be officially but quietly "reclassified" as toxic dump sites for mines. The lakes include prime wilderness fishing lakes from B.C. to Newfoundland. Environmentalists say the process amounts to a "hidden subsidy" to mining companies, allowing them to get around laws against the destruction of fish habitat ....
2. Jason Kenney and Peter Van Loan launched workplace raids, deporting workers without even allowing them to contact their families. One of those deported was believed to have been in retaliation for launching sexual abuse charges against her boss.
These U.S.-style attacks (even as they are being phased out by the Obama administration) were used to arrest refugee claimants, live-in caregivers, temporary workers and non-status people who have fallen outside of the strict and official compliance with immigration regulations. A worker who dropped out of status when she left the employment of a sexually abusive boss was arrested in the raids .. .In an illegal move, 41 of the nearly 100 arrested were tricked into signing waivers that removed their right to a PRRA hearing and a chance at protection from deportation. (Jason Kenney's Doublespeak Exposed: Tories unleash Canada Border Services on Migrants, By S.K. Hussan and Mac Scott, The Bullet, April 22, 2009)
Hundreds of Guatemalan migrant workers and their community allies marched through Guatemala City to the steps of the Canadian embassy on Wednesday, to protest the abusive treatment of migrants under Canada's Temporary Foreign Workers program. The workers at the protest had been fired and repatriated for defending their labour and human rights while working in Canada. UFCW Canada, the Agriculture Workers Alliance (AWA), Global Workers Justice and a number of other Guatemalan and international organizations also participated in the demonstration, and joined in the call for a complete review of the Temporary Foreign Workers Program because the federal government program fails to provide migrant workers with legal protection or access to the justice system even when the workers are mistreated.
1. After promising not to tax income trusts, Stephen Harper and Jim Flaherty did just that. And when asked to defend their claims of tax leakage, they brought forward heavily redacted documentation. Sound familiar? CAITI has a lot of great information on this and are still fighting the government's decision, since many Canadians lost all of their savings, especially seniors, because of this about face.
