Scott Stinson: Ontario Liberals struggle to slap ‘McGuinty’ label on gas-plant scandal

Scott Stinson | March 31, 2014

Was Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne dodging Question Period on Monday?

If furious indignation could be converted to cash, then the events of Monday at Queen’s Park would have had Ontario on the short road to solving its deficit woes.

But, on a day that began with the Liberals trying to attack the Progressive Conservatives over that party’s continued insistence that Premier Kathleen Wynne must have known something about the actions of a former top aide to Dalton McGuinty, the governing party was soon on the defensive again over revelations that one of the central characters in the latest gas-plant controversy was being paid by the Ontario Liberal Party until Sunday.

John Milloy, the Liberal house leader, confirmed that Peter Faist, named in police documents released Thursday as having been given special access to 24 computers in the premier’s office last year for the purpose, police allege, of deleting files, was under contract for IT services to the Liberal caucus office until Mr. McGuinty left office last year, and under contract to the Liberal party office until this past weekend. Police documents that have not been tested in court say Mr. Faist, who is the boyfriend of a former top McGuinty staffer, was brought into the former premier’s office by David Livingston, his then-chief of staff. The police allegations are part of an investigation of Mr. Livingston on possible breach-of-trust charges.

Mr. Milloy first disclosed the contractual relationships between Mr. Faist and various Liberal offices during Question Period on Monday. Those offices later said his company was paid about $160,000 by the Liberal caucus over two and a half years and about $60,000 by the Liberal party.

Those relationships will frustrate Liberal efforts to place everything related to the gas-plant scandal in a silo clearly labelled “MCGUINTY” while promoting Ms. Wynne as having been open and transparent about the controversy since her installation as Premier, and as having zero knowledge of what might have transpired on the other guy’s watch.

By the time Question Period was over, the Tories were again thundering about Ms. Wynne’s alleged role in all of this. As Mr. Milloy stood in the second-floor foyer of the legislature and said Mr. Faist’s company was employed by the Liberals for “routine maintenance” work, PC energy critic Lisa MacLeod stood a few steps away and described the “damning” revelations as proof that the IT specialist was “under the employment of Kathleen Wynne,” since she is the head of the Ontario Liberal Party.

The Premier wasn’t around to address the new developments herself, having gone to Sault Ste. Marie on what staffers described as a “long-planned” trip to make an announcement about expanding a university athletic centre and take part in a photo opportunity with Olympic curlers.

Ms. Wynne’s absence sparked its own share of drama, with NDP leader Andrea Horwath taking specific umbrage at the fact that the Premier was not in the legislature for the first Question Period since Thursday’s revelations about the OPP investigation.

Saying Ms. Wynne “made a mockery of accountability,” Ms. Horwath said the NDP caucus would not participate. Then she took her ball and went home, leading the province’s third-party MPPs in a walk out of the legislative chamber.

That meant it fell to only the Liberals and Progressive Conservatives to participate in the ritual whereby non-answers to non-questions occasionally punctuate the hurling of schoolyard taunts and insults, and it was hard to tell which party was more righteous in its condemnation of the other.

The Liberals professed their ongoing shock that the members opposite would suggest the Premier would have had anything at all to do with the gas-plant controversy, while the PCs said it was impossible to believe that, once Ms. Wynne became Premier-designate in late January, 2013, she would have been totally walled off from the goings-on in the office of the departing premier. The police documents suggest computers were accessed on Feb. 6 and Feb. 7 of that year; Ms. Wynne was sworn in as Premier on Feb. 11.

Speaking in Sault Ste. Marie on Monday afternoon, Ms. Wynne said PC leader Tim Hudak would be receiving a formal legal letter over what she said were untrue assertions that she had a role in any sort of document coverup. (The PCs made a show of pretending to cower in fear at these threats, apparently relishing the thought of the Liberals focusing more attention on gas plants in the courts.) The Premier also said that she wasn’t dodging Question Period on Monday but that she was fulfilling a planned trip and that she is obligated to travel the province.

But while no one would suggest that the Premier’s schedule is a simple one to organize, Ms. Wynne must have known that decamping for the province’s north on Monday would look a lot like a deliberate attempt to avoid accountability in the legislature. Could she not have sent her regrets and let the other two Cabinet ministers who were in Sault Ste. Marie for the occasion handle the ceremonial duties?

Ms. Wynne will be back in the legislature on Tuesday, we are told. How nice of her to stop by.

National Post

• Email: sstinson@nationalpost.com

Commentary by the Ottawa Mens Centre

Kathleen Wynne appears resigned to the fact that her career in Politics is coming to an end. She can look forward to NOT having earned the respect of the Ontario public and has been an abysmal replacement for Dalton McGuinty.

The Liberals have been supporters of Billions of Dollars for Corrupt Ontario Employees who have been frequently referred to as organized crime.

The worst Criminal Cartel, funded and entrenched by the Liberals has been and remains, what lawyers refer to at www.Blakcout.ca as "Powerful as god",i the Children's Aid Societies of Ontario.

Ontario voters and MP's of all parties, should spare a thought for the victims of Ontario's nastiest child abusers, and pathological liars, professional fabricators of evidence such as:

Ottawa CAS Child Protection Worker Phill Hiltz-Laforge who is a classic example of everything that is wrong with the Children's Aid Societies.

Then there is Lawyer, Marguerite Isobel Lewis, an evidence fabricating, lying lawyer who has no gumption about telling judges that black is white and white is black and even deliberately stating that the documentary evidence is the complete opposite to justify keeping children unnecessarily in care.

Marguerite Isobel Lewis is a publicly funded Professional Liar and a child abuser of the worst order. She earns, $130,000 a year to fabricate evidence.

Then there is probably one of the worst of the worst. Ottawa Police Detective Peter Van Der Zander who fabricates evidence to NOT charge the most violent female offenders while incarcerating their male victims of domestic violence.

The Ottawa Police gain hundreds of millions of dollars to promote violence and abuse against full time fathers and work with their partners in crime, the Children's Aid Society of Ottawa to promote violence against fathers.

These low life criminals have their absolute Power because decades of gutless politicians, mainly liberal, have allowed Ontario to be turned into a happy camping ground for state funded criminals.

Otttawa Mens Centre