'Giftgate' aka NDP waste
By PAUL RUTHERFORD
What a touching moment it was two years ago when Alberta Premier Ralph Klein was given a farewell gift at the Western Premiers Conference held in Gimli.
Remember it: The two-day chin-wag hosted by Gary Doer brought seven premiers together to talk about the major issues facing the west.
What Klein's plaque -- featuring the 34 premiers and four prime ministers he outlasted in 13 years -- cost is unknown.
But four Manitoba Crown Corporations secretly gave away more than $35,000 of taxpayers' money during the event.
A whopping $25,000 spent on gifts for the visiting premiers and their entourages. Then there's the $10,000 courtesy of Manitoba Lotteries for a Doc Walker concert, dinner included.
Documents obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation through the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act reveals taxpayers' money was squandered on everything from shirts, jackets and garment bags to chocolates, fishing rods, Heidi scarves and "hospitality" bags.
Fishing rods? Chocolates? Scarves?
I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the list. Why are my hard-earned tax dollars going to junk like this? If Canada's western premiers wanted gifts to celebrate this momentous occasion, they should have used their own credit cards.
Calling this "Giftgate" (as the Federation has done) is no stretch. And it's really no surprise considering how this government spends, spends and spends.
"Look if they had each been given a T-shirt, OK likely we would have said whatever, let's move on to the next issue but this is outrageous," Colin Craig, Manitoba provincial director of the federation told me Thursday. And every single taxpayer in this province should be spitting bullets about this.
Handing your money over freely, without telling any of us, were MPI, Manitoba Lotteries, Manitoba Hydro and the MLCC.
"Worst of all this is just the tip of the iceberg. We know there is more out there," Craig added, saying the costs involved in getting public information released are too high right now to get the total list of expenditures.
That's right. When you want to get public information -- contained in documents kept "secret" until they are requested -- on spending by government, you will be billed for some pencil pusher's time to locate it for you. What's not known still is the cost of food, accommodations, alcohol (hint, hint, Ralphie again) security, transportation, etc. A lot of bucks. The NDP mum on all of them.
Just another example of our "tarnished crowns" who seem to enjoy frittering away our money. Remember this past April when they each gave -- after Doer "encouraged" them to -- $1 million to the Canadian Museum for Human Rights?
And wasteful spending goes on and on.
What other pricey events or junkets is the premier or NDP ministers attending and hiding the costs of?
The Winnipeg Sun's pages are filled daily with stories about lack of funding for housing, health care, policing and the environment. Thirty-five thousand won't pay for all of these but it would have helped. Wasteful spending like this drives us around the bend.
The only way to end it is to elect a fiscally-sound government. That kind of leadership doesn't have NDP in the title.
This bears repeating: The only way to end it is to elect a fiscally-sound government. That kind of leadership doesn't have NDP in the title.
