09.22.2016 06:49 AM

I’m a Grit, and I like her (updated)

…but this is unacceptable. Link here.

“A firm headed by the man just reappointed as campaign manager for Kathleen Wynne’s Ontario Liberals has received almost $3 million in contracts from various Ontario government departments and bodies ranging from Wynne’s own office to the Ontario Energy Board.

A review of contract information obtained through freedom of information requests at Queen’s Park shows Gandalf Group, headed by Liberal strategist David Herle, has been awarded contracts worth roughly $2.7 million since Wynne became premier. 

The figure is an incomplete one as some departments have failed to fully answer requests for information while one, Ontario Power Generation, only released hourly rates paid to Herle and his associates.

Ontario residents fuming over high electrical bills will likely not be impressed to find out that Wynne’s campaign manager and another top employee at Gandalf billed OPG at $420 per hour. Other employees who do work for OPG are billed out at between $105 and $270 per hour.

This information was obtained through several freedom of information filings earlier this year after discovering that Wynne’s own department paid Herle’s Gandalf Group $885,755 in the fiscal year that ended March 31. 

At the time the premier responded that many polling firms receive government contracts while failing to point out that Gandalf was the only polling firm contracted by her office.”

UPDATE: Still would be interesting to speak to the bureaucrats who ran this “competitive process,” eh?

10 Comments

  1. Jamie Gilcig says:

    As horrid as this troughing is, the sad reality is that the opposition has been ineffective in dealing with it and replacing her regime.

  2. Lukelele says:

    Looks like The Rebel has a legitimate place in the universe.

  3. Jon Powers says:

    The Rebel and Brian Lilley are evil, therefore this story is not to be believed.

  4. dave constable says:

    In another century, I spent a couple or more decades as ‘professional associate’ with my teacher union. Over time, I built up a repertoire of workshops that I would lay on my victims: fellow teachers, administrators, trustees, parents. One of the main single day-ers was on helping a school staff (or any other group) plan their coming year(s). I facilitated.
    I would get a call from Big Union HQ to contact a school staff somewhere in my half of the province. I would call and we would work out our day. The Big Union paid my travel, accommodation and meals, and repaid my school board my salary and teacher-on -call cost.
    That was it. I did not get paid extra. (I liked it, because it always gave me ideas and practices I could apply with my own students and colleagues.)
    But professional development in the ed biz always has a conflict happening between teachers’ organizations and the administrative bureaucracy. Both try to control pro d.

    IN a senior high school I had taught in, I heard that an old pro d associate pal of mine had been hired by the admin to do a pro d day for a staff of about 50. The old pal came from Victoria all the way to Northeast BC. On my way to work, I dropped in on my old pal at the high school to talk shop. He told me that he had gone private, set up his own company, doing these pro d sessions. He showed my his ‘stuff’ and told me what he would be doing. It was exactly the same ‘stuff’ and procedures I used, except that he told me how much he was soaking up from the clever administrator and school board, and we laughed at the fact that it was just over 9 times as much tax money as it would have been for a Big Union pro d personfrom Victoria to do. …and many more times what it would have cost for me, from down the street, to do it.
    Private consultants, eh!

    There is an acronym, OPM ( Other People’s Money) for the virus that afflicts politicians and administration bureaucrats when they are trying so hard to be in control things.

  5. Cory says:

    Weren’t similar things reported a year or two back?

  6. Ronald O'Dowd says:

    Warren,

    Well, I guess this means another sincere apology in the next leaders’ debate…this may be the beginning of the end. Too bad.

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