The photo of a blank cheque on the report’s cover says you all you need to know about what Ontario's Auditor General, Jim McCarter, discovered while investigating the McGuinty government's $32-million slush fund that handed out cheques to various cultural groups.

In fact, the Auditor General described the process behind the slush fund as “among the worst that (I’ve) seen, in terms of almost no controls, process, or accountability.”

The report released by McCarter on July 26 found evidence that the money was in many cases distributed at the discretion of Citizenship and Immigration Minister Mike Colle’s office without any process to ensure that taxpayers’ money was being spent properly or even to determine whether the funds were needed by the recipient groups. In some cases, no paperwork or formal application for funds could be found.

One of the many examples highlighted by the Auditor General was a $1-million grant to the Ontario Cricket Association when the association only asked for $150,000. The association then deposited $500,000 of the funds in a GIC because they did not need the money, and used $20,000 in a lavish dinner celebration to thank Dalton McGuinty for the million-dollar cheque.

Similarly, the Auditor General confirmed a number of slush fund recipients had ties to the Liberal Party, such as the Chinese Professional Association of Canada, which received $250,000 a few months after 10 board members attended Minister Colle's Toronto fundraiser. One board member worked in the Minister's office while another was the treasurer of the local Liberal Party.

West Niagara is blessed by many hard working and dedicated community groups who do wonderful work in our community. Unfortunately, they did not have an opportunity to even apply for any of this year-end grant money. As I said in the Legislature, it wasn't what you do but who you knew that determined your success in accessing a grant.

Thankfully, the vast majority of the press joined with the opposition MPPs and rejected the Liberal MPPs' lines that the PCs were “just blowing smoke” and that this type of year-end spending “has been around forever”.

A few weeks after he stonewalled 270 opposition questions in the Legislature and he and his party voted against a PC motion to call in the Auditor General to investigate, public pressure finally forced Premier McGuinty to relent and call for the report.

The Auditor General pointed out that the grants he researched amount to only a tiny fraction of the total amount of money spent by the McGuinty government in year-end spending sprees – a practice that the Auditor has repeatedly raised concerns about.
Dalton McGuinty must come clean and agree to an audit of all $2.7 billion his government has rushed out the door in year-end spending.