Millions In Uncollected Taxes Just One Of Many Ways Your Money Is Being Wasted At Queen's Park: Report
It's the one day of the year when one man confirms what you always believed: the government is wasting a lot of your tax money.
It comes from the pen of James McCarter, Ontario's Auditor General, who spent months looking at the ways Queen's Park spends your dollars.
Among the findings in his annual report: the Liberals are collecting $500 million less in tobacco taxes than they should and no one's watching the watchdogs charged with making sure your money is spent efficiently.
The tobacco tax omission is amongst the most glaring of the fault finding in his review. That $500 million in uncollected revenues is the same amount as this year's projected deficit.
"This is a lot of money that the province could be missing out on during these difficult economic times," McCarter critiques in a statement. "The existence of this tax gap remains a major issue for provincial tax coffers."
McCarter also found flaws with the amount of taxes paid on gasoline and diesel-fuel, cash cows that normally swell the government's coffers.
The Liberals have also committed millions of dollars to the court system trying to fix the backlogs, but they continue to grow longer despite the infusion of cash.
What else is on his list of eyebrow raising problems?
There's a serious absentee problem in the province's jails, with corrections officers taking an average of 32.5 sick days annually.
The government is also pouring your dough into improving programs, while little improvement is ever actually noted. McCarter cites special education as a specific example, pointing out it's received a boost of 50 per cent in funding but only five per cent more children are being helped.
And on one seems able to explain just where that money went.
He's also critical of food inspection standards, which helped lead to this summer's deadly listeriosis outbreak.And he takes the Technical Standards and Safety Authority to task again, for the second time since 2003. That organization is responsible for overseeing safety provisions are met in a host of industries - including those that handle propane.
But he notes the huge explosion at the Sunrise facility in North York proves not enough has changed to stop the kind of accident that left two dead and many homes in ruins in August.
And he has bad things say about the so-called P3 Hospital Project, the first private-public partnership effort of its kind in Ontario. "The costs and benefits of this public-private partnership approach were not adequately assessed before the decision was taken to proceed," McCarter writes. "Our work indicated that the all-in cost could well have been lower if the government had built the hospital itself."
Roger Petersen is going over the report and will have more examples and reaction on CityNews at Five and Six.
Auditor General Waste Report Highlights
(Click on each topic to view the Auditor's conclusion)
Better Oversight Needed Says Auditor General of Ontario
Auditor Concerned About Government Legislating Accounting Rules
Many Addicts Not Getting Treatment
Kids' Mental Health System a "Patchwork"
Collision Rates Involving Commercial Vehicles On the Rise
Community-living Services for Mentally Ill Fall Short
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