05.02.2012 06:52 AM

Hudak advisor receives thousands to hire Ornge insider

Many years ago, while Conservatives were still the government, an Ontario PC lobbyist introduced me to Chris Mazza. Mazza was a Toronto doctor hoping to set up an air ambulance service.

He was also, the Con told me, a hardcore Conservative supporter. He and his chief fart-catcher – another Conservative partisan, named Dr. Blum – met me and described their plans for their empire. They also expressed the fervent hope Ontario Liberals would never form government.

I thought they were nut cases, and never ran into them again. In the past few months, of course, I’ve heard all about their exploits. And about their use of card-carrying Conservative campaign managers and lobbyists and lawyers.

This morning, we now see why Tim Hudak’s minions tried to use QP yesterday to slime Liberals, and friends of Liberals.

They knew what was coming.

Mazza, a water ski enthusiast, had met and become close friends with Long, a former water ski instructor who worked as an account manager at a Newmarket water ski club.

Kelly Mitchell, one of the Pathway Group partners, received a call from Mazza in October 2005, asking him if he would hire a young woman to work as a consultant.

Mitchell did not need a new consultant, but — eager to continue doing business with ORNGE — he decided to do Mazza a favour. He interviewed Long in December 2005 and hired her with a start date of early January 2006…

The contract, between Ontario Air Ambulance (which became ORNGE) and Pathway Group, provides the full-time services of a Pathway employee (Long) on a secondment basis starting August 15, 2006. Pathway was paid $8,836 plus GST each month, along with all approved expenses, the contract states.
 

5 Comments

  1. CraigD says:

    Ok as far as it goes, but is this not another huge reason why the Ontario Liberals should never have had anything to do with this Mazza fellow? Ontario’s Liberal government set up Ornge and nobody forced them to do it. What is starting to surprise me is why the OPP are not getting involved and there does not even seem to be talk about calling them in. Seems to me there is plenty to investigate and, if appropriate, charges laid.

    • SF Thomas, Ottawa says:

      The OPP are already involved Craig. They have been investigating since February this year http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/story/2012/02/16/ornge-opp-probe.html

      The point Warren is making on ORNGE is not that nothing wrong happened but probably that the PCs are being hypocritical by trying to pin this as some kind of scheme set up solely by Liberal party members, but that in fact there were many people involved with ORNGE from the both the Liberals and Conservatives (such as Apps from the Liberals and Harper’s former chief of staff from the Conservatives). Personally from what I’ve seen it just seems like a big mess that unfortunately escaped notice for a long period of time,

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