Olivia Chow wants to take back Toronto for the NDP

Sue-Ann Levy:

...[Olivia Chow] was forced to resign from the police services board for her lack of judgement.

The woman who purports to be a good role model for children also endorsed a move by OCAP in 2005 to urge the poor to flout welfare rules and seek a special $250-a-month diet benefit, to which most were not entitled.

Last Thursday, she claimed that as mayor she’d know how to make every penny count and has the “strength to say no to spending” that isn’t smart or responsible. .. 

..Tory MPP Doug Holyday, who served on city council with Chow, said she was part of a group who never saw a tax dollar they didn’t want to spend...

...According to media reports from back then, Layton and Chow — purported champions of the homeless and the poor — were living in an $800-month three-bedroom apartment in a heavily subsidized co-op, while making jointly $120,000 a year (one-third of which was tax-free).

The city would have given away land for free to build the co-op and about 30% of the units would have been offered to low-income people with subsidies.

While Layton and Chow were not in one of those units, it was only in the final few months before they moved out — largely due to public pressure — that Layton coughed up an extra $325 a month to try to bring their rent up closer to the true market value of their unit.

In her book, My Journey, Chow explained that they actually had two apartments in the same building. When they married in 1988, Chow moved into Layton’s two-bedroom, leaving her mom in the one-bedroom downstairs, she wrote.

She also said Layton paid $1,200 in monthly market rent for his 10th-floor apartment and that a “self-appointed lynch mob” sought to destroy their safe haven.

In September of 1998, then-municipal affairs minister Al Leach told an estimates committee, during questions on the Layton/Chow co-op affair, that the cost to operate each unit was $1,200 per month and anyone claiming $900 was market value still received a “subsidy from Ontario taxpayers"...

More HERE

Terrorists will never take down TDSB headquarters

Why would a terrorist bother to take out the Toronto District School Board's headquarters?

These deranged assholes are already doing more than any terrorist could dream of to destroy western civilization.

Enjoy the TDSB glossary of brainwashing terms. with which they want to condition children Click HERE

And by the way, according to the TDSB only whites can be racist and only men can be sexist.

Whether Muslims can be homophobic makes TDSB heads explode, because they can't process an equation where two groups whose TDSB identity is wrapped entirely in victimhood come into conflict.

Genderism: the belief that the binary construct of gender, in which there are only two genders (male and female), is the most normal, natural and preferred gender identity. This binary construct does not include or allow for people to be intersex, transgendered, transsexual or genderqueer. 

But why worry? After all the TDSB is run with a degree of incompetence that suggests corruption, it'll probably be bankrupt in a few years anyway.


h/t Socialist Studies

Toronto District School Board officially gives you all the finger

Senior staff at the Toronto District School Board received $1.29 million in salary increases despite a wage freeze between March 2010 and August 2013, according to a forensic audit released by the province Tuesday.

The improper raises, as well as unapproved contracts and misspent funds, were contained in a damning audit conducted by Ernst and Young LLP.

Some of the key findings: 

Wages for senior staff and supervisors paid in excess of the wage freeze for the period between March 2010 to August 2013.

Under procurement, 45 per cent of 20 sample transactions reviewed did not use a competitive bid process; almost half of those did not meet the approval requirements.

79 per cent of the transactions reviewed in the director’s office expenses did not use a competitive bid process.

Potentially ineligible trustee expenses, including a duplicate reimbursement for home internet charges, purchase of a tablet computer for over $100 more than what is allowed, and hotel expenses for a one-night stay in a downtown Toronto hotel.

$3.2 million in education programs spending may not have “been used in accordance” with ministry guidelines.

More at CTV NEWS 

h/t Robyn Urback & Melissa Schultz

We live in a time of the most corrupt, incompetent provincial government in Ontario`s history

It would be hard to imagine a report more damaging to the credibility of Ontario's Liberal government than the one released Tuesday by Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk on its decision to cancel the Oakville gas plant.

First under former premier Dalton McGuinty, and later, under Premier Kathleen Wynne, the Liberals estimated the cost of cancelling this plant was $40 million.

Lysyk found it will cost up to $1.112 billion, with the most likely final figure being $815 million, after future savings and cost add-ons are factored in.

Even more devastating to Liberal credibility, Lysyk found that despite McGuinty's insistence he had no idea of the costs of cancelling the Oakville plant, his office was directly responsible for decisions that dramatically increased those costs.

"On cancelling the Oakville plant, the Premier's Office assured TCE (TransCanada Energy Ltd.) that it would be compensated for the full financial value of its contract for the Oakville plant," Lysyk found, "instead of relying on protections in that contract that could have minimized the damages paid to the builder following cancellation."

In other words, the Liberals were so desperate to cancel the politically unpopular Oakville plant leading up to the 2011 election, they wasted hundreds of millions of public dollars in order to do so.

More HERE 

McWynnety's F-you message to Toronto: "Raise taxes"

Kathleen Wynne's Provincial Liberals have reneged on a promise which the Globe and Mail had reported verified in a letter to the City of Toronto, to maintain annual transfer payments until 2018.

The clear reason is to punish the city for electing a capable fiscal conservative who highlights Wynne's inept, unmandated government's incompetence.

The incredibly biased Toronto Star, which inserted a gratuitous crack cocaine reference in its article, reports:

“Relationships involve more than one party,” Wynne said curtly Tuesday.

Her comments came after the mayor’s tumultuous one-hour meeting Monday with Finance Minister Charles Sousa at Queen’s Park.

Ford left saying he was “furious” at a change in funding arrangements that will leave the city with a $50 million budget hole to fix next year.

“He told me to increase taxes. This was a complete waste of everyone’s time today. I’m very disappointed,” a visibly seething mayor said afterward.

Kathleen McWynnty offers Ontario a new face but the same old lies and corruption

More HERE

Nominate Brian Lilley`s CBC Exposed for the CBC Book Awards

That`ll show 'em!

Brian Lilley's book covers waste and corruption that Canadian taxpayers subsidize to the tune of one billion dollars each year.

You can nominate CBC Exposed as best Canadian book of 2012 through THIS LINK. (UPDATE  - March 28 - the CBC has killed the nomination page - it had 37 comments - 34 of them nominating CBC Exposed and they had hundreds of "plus ratings")

Copies of the book can be purchased through Amazon and Chapters Indigo.


h/t Matthew L.










Update: and for those interested in doing more good works, you can find out about sponsoring a ride for cancer research here

UPDATE 2: The Ceeb website has closed comments on the awards...not hard to figure out why.

We Must Sacrifice For Great Leader Kim Dong Wynne

Bloated public sector salaries, perks unsustainable

Also.. more documents about the Ontario Liberals' dodgy, vote-buying cancellation of two gas plants emerge while the Great Leader continues to prevent an inquiry. 

Prepare for the shrill cry of Toronto's Arts Leeches

If you were a carpenter and you weren't very good at your job, odds are you'd have a tough time getting work, and eventually you'd have to stop doing it professionally on a full time basis and find something else to support yourself.

What probably wouldn't happen is that you would say your carpentry adds intangible benefit to society-at-large and that you make great sacrifices to be a carpenter despite popular rejection. You would most likely not expect that the government should give you money so that you could continue to practice your craft, which evidently is something you're not not good enough at to generate enough support so you can be self-sufficient.

Craftsmen and, well just everyone else in every line of work could take a page out of Canada's third-rate arts community, who think that the drivel they produce that only a handful of people care about should be subsidized by tax money to the tune of millions per year.

Great artists throughout history have painted or written because they had something to create or say that came from a passion in their soul. They were anxious for patronage, but real artists, the Van Goghs and Melvilles and Fitzgeralds crated in poverty out of love. They achieved success, in their lifetimes of after, because of the merit of their work.

But Merit need not be the key to success as an artist in Toronto. You can be a talentless hack, but if you have connections on Arts' Councils and whine loudly enough, you can still have taxpayers' hard-earned money deposited directly into your bank account st support your "art."

That may change soon. The new administration at City Hall has let it be known that cuts are needed and they have committed to keep taxes down. The prospect that they may have to create something in which someone is actually interested enough to pay for has sent Toronto's "arts community" into a full-fledged panic. The City Manager's report comes in tomorrow morning with the mandate to make either 10% cuts across the board or accept the recommendations of the consulting firm that has been examining city services over the last few months.

It's expected that arts funding, which is only of major benefit to marginal artists, will be first on the chopping block. They may not be able to fill theatre seats, paint pictures that people want to buy, make music that people want to hear or write words people are willing to pay to read, but Toronto's arts community does know how to scream loudly when they fear the government largess may come to an end.

So when you hear shrill shrieking tomorrow, its source will be from Queen Street by people who may actually, finally have to do something that someone values enough to pay for.

Today's installment of Your Tax Dollars Hard at Work: Summer Camp for Canada's Communist Revolutionaries

Alternatives International, the odious anti-Capitalist organization whose board includes union thug and former vice president of the anti-Semitic Canadian Arab Federation, Ali Mallah, is having a summer camp this month. Alternatives' recent notoriety emerged from its being an organizer of the Sea Hitler boat to Gaza.

Will there be marshmallow roasts, canoe trips and games of capture the flag? No to the former two, and maybe yes to the last, but only if the flag captured is the flag of a democracy which is to be replaced with the Hammer and Sickle.

"Since 1994, the Alternatives' Days have been an annual weekend of activities related to current social, economic, political and environmental concerns. Once again, a unique program is being offered this year under the theme of Revolutions Confronting Neo-Liberalism. This theme refers to the Arab Spring and illustrates new developments in global resistance to neoliberalism. Discussions will aim to define strategies and the role that social movements - movements that strive for social justice and ecological alternatives to unsustainable development - in Canada have to play in this struggle.

Throughout the weekend, activists and artists from within and outside Quebec, as well as international partners, official guests and members of Alternatives will come together to share analyses, reflections and good will."

The "good will" of which they speak is more likely to be directed at the Castro regime in Cuba, Chavez in Venezuela, or Ahmadinejad in Iran than to any of us in Canada.  Neo-Liberalism, for those unaware, is how communists refer to the economic and political system in democracies like Canada and the USA. So those Revolutions Confronting Neo-Liberalism these people are talking about would be aimed at overthrowing our system of government.

You might think that sounds pretty stupid, but not nearly as stupid as our government subsidizing an event that promotes the end of western democracy as we know it.

Last month, Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said that Alternatives federal funding related to their Mideast activities had been cancelled. But that group still received almost $1.3 million dollars in federal funds from your taxes last year, and it is safe to assume some of those funds are going to events such as its communist revolutionary retreat.

This is one of the most idiotic recent uses of tax funds (and there is a lot of stiff competition in that arena). Let Jason Kenney know how you feel about the Canadian government helping to fund those that seek the destruction of western capitalism and democracy by sending him an email.

Mr. & Mrs. Gravy Train do Ottawa (and the world) in style

Jack and Olivia have shown that they, like the leadership of Canada's most appalling, self-interested unions such as CUPE and CUPW, whose support they enjoy, know how to live the high life on other people's hard earned money.


From The Toronto Star:

Toronto's Jack Layton and Olivia Chow are Ottawa's million-dollar couple.

According to recently released House of Commons records, the NDP leader and his long-time wife, Chow, who is MP for Trinity Spadina, charged Canadian taxpayers about $1.16 million in MP expenses last year for running their offices, living in Ottawa and paying for associated travel costs...


Chow's expenses tallied $530,304.73 and Layton's was $628,913.68.

The NDP's power couple lives in a $2,000-a-month apartment just steps from Parliament Hill.

To stay in their home away from home, they charged a total of $42,478 for accommodation and per diem expenses.

Chow was reimbursed $17,010.20, while Layton charged the maximum of $25,468.

“It's within the law,” Chow snapped when asked why they both bill for accommodation while in Ottawa, later explaining they split the rent, about $12,000 each, depending on how much time they spend in Ottawa.

Chow refused to break out how much of her $17,010.20 was for rent and for per diem expenses.

On an amusing note, the Stalinist thought police at rabble.ca, the nutcase radical leftist website founded by Judy Rebick and published by NDP MP Libby Davies' spouse, Kim Elliott were so disturbed that this news would cause dissent among the unwashed er..rabble that frequent the site that they shut down not just one but two discussion threads on this subject.

Rob Ford's popularity and why city council's big "slush fund" spenders don't like him

Royson James, one of the few columnists at al-Starzeera who hasn't been driven over the edge of sanity by Rob Ford, wrote an astute article on Saturday that points out some of the attraction Ford has for Toronto's voters.

Ford doesn’t have to define himself during this campaign. Over 10 years as a city councillor his message hasn’t deviated: Keep spending in check. He owns the brand.

Starting with his own office budget, Ford famously spent $2 of the allotted $53,000 tax dollars one year, even as many spent near the limit and most spent about $40,000. That created many enemies among the big spenders. Some argued he was using his own money to run his office and tried to force him to use tax dollars.

The result? Now Ford must file the spending amounts with the clerk, even if he uses his own money. But all this has done is reaffirm that Ford spends much less than his counterparts, no matter whose money it is. And the legend grows.

Critics argue that the potential savings from office budgets is so small, the impact on the $9.2 billion budget is negligible. Critics underestimate the value of symbols. If councillors routinely waste thousands of dollars on the purchase of espresso machines, bunny suits, expensive Christmas cards, unwarranted cab rides to Woodbridge late at night — all under the guise of serving constituents — what else are they wasting, constituents wonder.

It sure got me wondering. 

Particularly after seeing Joe Mihevc's overwrought press release in which he abandoned his old ally Joe Pantalone to advocate strategic voting for George "Captain eHealth" Smitherman.

So I took a look at some city councillors' expenses.

Ward 21 Councillor Joe Mihevc has spent $13,800 of tax dollars since 2008 on his website. 

Ward 30 Councillor Paula Fletcher spent over $18,000 on "advertising and promotion" since 2008.

Although that sounds almost paltry compared to Ward 32 Councillor Sandra Bussin's  $27,000 in the "advertising and promotion" budget line. And that doesn't even include her notorious "Bussin Blue Jays" which came out of the approximately $15,000 she charged to "other expenses" since 2008.

 (And "other expenses" isn't all other expenses..oh, no, not by a long shot. It's just stuff that doesn't fit into one of the many other budget lines expensed by city councilors.)

Advertising and promotion of what!!??!!

When Ford spends next to nothing of his $53,000 office budget, and is critical of big spenders on council, among whom Mihevc is one of the biggest, James is right, it 's got to create some resentment.

But that resentment might be on the voters' side and work for Ford. Particularly when one sees where some of the "slush fund" gets spent.






Council expenses can be viewed here.

And Joe, that's some great website we paid for.  I probably could have got you a better deal. Or you could have just gone to blogger.com and set one up for free and saved us that money. Still, who cares if you may have overpaid? It's not like that money came out of your pocket.