MPP on committee probing Liberal spending criticizes group’s work
TORONTO — A committee tasked with getting to the bottom of the previous Liberal government’s accounting practices has achieved very little, an Opposition legislator sitting on the panel dominated by Premier Doug Ford’s Tories said Friday.
Waterloo MPP Catherine Fife said the interim findings of the Select Committee for Financial Transparency, released in a twopage report this week, amounted to a list of witnesses it has called to testify and little else.
“It’s pretty sloppy,” she said of the committee’s work. “The interim report just basically listed who we met on what date. That’s because the timelines for this committee are so tight and the information we heard we already knew.”
When Ford announced the creation of the committee in September, he said it would investigate Liberal accounting practices, decision-making and policy objectives. The group’s mandate was to get to the bottom of Liberal practices his government said created a $15-billion deficit.
The deficit figure has been disputed by critics who say the government is including spending earmarked by the previous Liberal regime for programs the Tories are cancelling.
The select committee is made up of six Progressive Conservatives, three NDP legislators and no Liberals.
Fife said the group’s work is politically motivated.
“I’ve said to those (Tory committee) members, if you already know what you want from this committee can’t you just save us a lot of time and can’t we just get to it,” she said. “They clearly have an end goal which is purely politics.”
The committee began its hearings on Oct. 15, issued an interim report on Thursday and is set to table a final report on Dec. 13.
It has heard from 15 witnesses so far, including Ontario’s auditor general, the province’s financial accountability officer and a number of highranking bureaucrats.
Progressive Conservative legislator Ross Romano, who sits on the committee, said the group has discovered valuable information.
“It has become clear that the previous government ignored repeated warnings as they tried to deceive the people of Ontario and hide the true impact of Ontario’s finances,” Romano said in a statement.