Livingston’s crime is directly linked to Liberals

Re Livingston’s sentence a gift to provincial Liberal foes, Cohn, April 12

Martin Regg Cohn’s column is offensive to me as a taxpayer, an Ontarian and personally. Former chief of staff David Livingston’s four-month jail sentence is in no way a “gift.”

His criminal conviction and sentencing is a direct result of the Liberals cancelling the Mississauga power plant, solely for their own political purposes.

If the Liberal cabinet, which included now-Premier Kathleen Wynne, had not done so, Livingston would not have had the opportunity to commit the criminal act for which he was rightly convicted.

As a former provincial deputy minister of finance, a former senior executive with leading Canadian corpora- tions and a former colleague of Mr. Livingston’s at a leading Canadian bank, I am even more offended by Cohn’s statement that “Livingston’s mistake was to bring a corporate ‘cando’ mentality to the halls of government.”

I successfully applied the “can-do” mentality in all senior positions I filled, in both government and business, without committing a criminal act.

The cancellation was an action of the Liberal government for which all members must be held accountable, as Mr. Livingston has been held accountable for his individual criminal act.

They are linked and it is the opposition parties’ obligation to make Ontario voters realize the linkage. Only with the facts can each voter make his or her decision correctly. Bill Fearn, Toronto

Martin Cohn’s column should read, “judge gifts Livingston with a light sentence.” Livingston destroyed evidence that would have, without doubt, implicated him and numerous others — including then-premier Dalton McGuinty and current Premier Kathleen Wynne — in a criminal conspiracy to close gas plants, at a cost of more than $1 billion to the province.

For the sake of two seats in parliament, the taxpayers of Ontario have been robbed of justice. Cohn then asks, “Will it affect the final judgment of voters on June 7?”

It should, or we have a problem. The gas plants play just a small part in the total lack of respect the Liberals have for our hard-earned tax dollars. Tim Hockridge, Apsley, Ont.

A career bank executive and well-connected, well-paid, top aid to the premier participates in the erasure of computer hard drives to prevent fallout from a $1-billion power-plant cancellation.

Surely this constitutes a direct, premeditated attack upon our democracy. Four months for a man who was in a position of public trust and who should have known better. Too harsh? Cry me a river. Gerard Shkuda, Burlington