A $3,500 exercise in flawed symbolism
This week, Premier Dalton McGuinty summoned his Liberal caucus in from their summer frolics to attend a daylong meeting on, among other things, how to market his proposed harmonized sales tax.
Oddly, though Queen's Park is a summertime ghost town, its corridors an echoing emptiness, McGuinty did not hold this meeting in the government caucus room so generously provided in the Legislature building by taxpayers.
Nor did he find adequate to his tastes any of the many other rooms vacant around government precincts, which if not quite up to the Palace of Versailles are at least the equal of most hotel conference centres on the airport strip.
Instead, the caucus meeting was convened at the Toronto Board of Trade down on Bay St.
In the real-estate biz, the holy trinity is said to be location, location, location. In the image-obsessed political racket, it's symbolism, symbolism, symbolism.
So just what did the premier's choice of setting say?
First, for an initiative frequently billed as "bold," this was hardly a courageous expedition. The harmonized tax has long been a fond cause of the business community. It's doubtful that Liberals arriving in the heartland of HST support had a single chance encounter with a mind that needed changing.
How much bolder would it have been, say, to have met in the conference room of a suburban hockey complex, or the party room of a seniors' residence – the better to show a willingness to make the case for the new tax to folks who seem to have the deepest misgivings about it.
But there was a higher imperative at play. The McGuinty brain trust wants to demonstrate its pro-business bona fides. It also appears to be a little twitchy at the skittishness over the tax among government MPPs.
It was probably to keep potential caucus grumblers a little farther from meddlesome reporters that the meeting was held off site, and that the diversionary tactic of a premier's event was scheduled uptown at about the same time MPPs were arriving downtown.
Whatever the goal, it was apparently worth paying for. As the Star's Robert Benzie learned yesterday, the Liberal caucus paid $3,500 for the privilege of using the Bay St. space.
Which brings us back to the Choco-Bites.
That dubious $3.99 confection that one eHealth Ontario consultant already billing the province for $2,700 a day saw fit to also expense to taxpayers. The junk food that became shorthand for the spending fiasco for which the premier came to take ultimate responsibility.
What McGuinty said when new rules were announced for contracting and expense procedures was that "common sense" was called for in these matters. In fact, he set a new gold standard for appraising expenditures.
"If you couldn't sit down in front of a family at the breakfast table and say, `I'm submitting the bill for this or for that,' and look them straight in the eye then maybe you shouldn't be submitting that bill."
As it happens, the $3,500 bill to rent the Board of Trade space while government meeting rooms were vacant could have covered a lot.
It would cover about 350 hours' pay at minimum wage. It would cover the proposed HST rebate to several Ontario families.
It could even have covered the daily fees of an eHealth Ontario consultant, or about 14 per cent of a speech by the agency's former CEO, or a Willy Wonka-worthy mountain of Choco Bites.
But one thing's clear. Odds are the premier didn't vet the room rental past any Ontario breakfast table.
1 comment:
hey you voted for change. And got broken promises.
Except that you justify it.
The irony, is lost on you however.
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