News from the Park : Ornge, Gas Plants, Email Deletions & Sudbury Bribery Scandal
MPP Michael Mantha, Algoma-Manitoulin
QUEEN’S PARK, ON – The legislature returned this week to turmoil and scandals once again. The present liberal government is embroiled in three separate OPP investigations for Ornge, Gas Plants email deletions, and the recent Sudbury bribery scandal.
Thursday, minutes before question period Ontario’s Chief Elections Officer released a report confirming what we already knew, that the Premier’s Deputy Chief of Staff Pat Sabora and Senior Liberal operative Gerry Lougheed Jr. violated the Elections Act for bribery. There are two OPP investigations into Ms. Sabora and Mr. Lougheed’s attempts to bribe Mr. Andrew Olivier with an “appointment or job” in exchange for withdrawing from the Liberal nomination race in Sudbury by election this month.
Audio recordings of these conversations leave no question of a doubt that they broke the law. This scandal is a clear breach of trust between the government and the people of this province.
Friday NDP Leader Andrea Horwath asked the Premier to start undoing the damage she has done to the integrity of the government. She asked the Premier to take two concrete steps: Call for the jobs of Pat Sorbara and Gerry Lougheed, and come clean about when she decided to appoint her candidate.
Instead of taking these the issue of bribery seriously, the Premier chose to smear every single MPP in the legislature.
Over to the gas plants scandal, OPP documents show that then Deputy Chief of Staff Laura Miller and her partner Peter Faist were key to the Liberal email deletion schemes. They have since fled to BC and Premier Wynne has refused all requests to bring them to Ontario to testify before the committee.
The report states that the Liberals attempted to mislead Ontarians about the true costs of the gas plants, and the Premiers office was at the center of a wide spread email deletion scheme. This liberal government continues to prove they have no regard for taxpayers, the law and democracy.
To end on a positive note, my colleague MPP John Vanthof introduced a bill to allow more off-road vehicles on highways which passed unanimously. This bill will allow for side-by-side and two-up off-road vehicles to be driven on the shoulders of provincial highways. In addition, my colleague MPP Peggy Sattler called on the Liberal government to expand postsecondary co-ops and other paid work experience programs at Ontario colleges and universities, and put an end to exploitative unpaid internships. Youth unemployment in Ontario is more than double the provincial average, and increasing numbers of students are graduating with no work experience at all. Sattler’s bill will expand programs such as co-ops, internships, field placements, and others, enabling Ontario college and university students to gain career-related work experience while they are studying. It will also strengthen oversight of these programs to ensure they provide high-quality learning opportunities for students. Both these bills will now go to second reading.
I have worked with many groups in Algoma-Manitoulin, and presented your petitions in the legislature. I am pleased to see some of our issues moving forward.
As always, please feel free to contact my office about this issue or any other provincial matters. You can reach my constituency office by email at mmantha-co@ndp.on.ca or by phone at 705-461-9710/1-800-831-1899.
MPP Michael Mantha, Algoma-Manitoulin
