You will forgive us for not bowing to journalistic convention and referring to a “perception” of influence-peddling when talking about Ontario’s useless party financing laws. There is no “perception” that something is awry. The fact of the matter is that, thanks to the province’s legislated indifference to normal standards of behaviour and morality, Ontario’s Liberal government practises the systematic selling of access to wealthy donors from the corporate and labour worlds.
The Toronto Star reported on Tuesday that the Liberal Party assigns high-ranking cabinet ministers annual fundraising quotas of as much as $500,000, and expects them to raise that money by hitting up wealthy stakeholders in the economic sectors affected by the departments they run.
The money is raked in at swish, high-cost dinners that promise intimate access to ministers and to Premier Kathleen Wynne. The Star’s revelation comes just weeks after The Globe and Mail reported that energy-industry insiders paid $6,000 each for one-on-one access to Ms. Wynne and to Energy Minister Bob Chiarelli at a dinner in Toronto on March 10.
The Ontario Liberal Party has turned ministers into salespeople, giving them hard quotas and telling them to sell the one product every lobbyist wants – uncontrolled access to the levers of government. It is a practice so unbecoming that a former Liberal finance minister, Dwight Duncan, says he quit politics in 2013 partly because he was “sick” of being asked to hustle for the party.
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In Ontario and B.C., weak laws mean government access is for sale - The Globe and Mail
The Toronto Star reported on Tuesday that the Liberal Party assigns high-ranking cabinet ministers annual fundraising quotas of as much as $500,000, and expects them to raise that money by hitting up wealthy stakeholders in the economic sectors affected by the departments they run.
The money is raked in at swish, high-cost dinners that promise intimate access to ministers and to Premier Kathleen Wynne. The Star’s revelation comes just weeks after The Globe and Mail reported that energy-industry insiders paid $6,000 each for one-on-one access to Ms. Wynne and to Energy Minister Bob Chiarelli at a dinner in Toronto on March 10.
The Ontario Liberal Party has turned ministers into salespeople, giving them hard quotas and telling them to sell the one product every lobbyist wants – uncontrolled access to the levers of government. It is a practice so unbecoming that a former Liberal finance minister, Dwight Duncan, says he quit politics in 2013 partly because he was “sick” of being asked to hustle for the party.
mo
In Ontario and B.C., weak laws mean government access is for sale - The Globe and Mail
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