5 reasons we hate Bobby Clarke

Apr. 28 - Toronto's Top 5 column.

I'm going with #1, and #2 is why the mute button is used when Clark's mug shows up on the TV.

We hate the flyers,
Bobby Clark's a maggot
A whiny little maggot

(By the end of this round of the play-offs, I might even know all the words to the song.)

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Groups say ... never mind

Apr. 28 - Special interest groups in Ontario say that we, the taxpayers, won't mind paying extra money to keep their pet projects afloat (Grits say you want deficit.

The groups, involving a total of 254 people in six cities, ...

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MFP Scandal Review

Apr. 25 - It all started with computers and an arrangement with MFP Financial Services Ltd. in Mississauga, which claims to provide innovative solutions.

Corruption concerns raised in computer probe - Ya think?

Alarm bells began sounding in Toronto after municipal officials in Waterloo, about 100 kilometres to the southwest, found their financing costs for a new sports park had blown up by more than $100 million to $227 million.

As with Toronto's computers, MFP had arranged the Waterloo financing.

A closer look showed the computer deal, which had been slated to cost about $43 million, had somehow ballooned to about $83 million.

In due course, council opted for a full-blown judicial inquiry to find out how Toronto taxpayers had ended up paying an average of more than $8,000 for personal computers, many of which are now obsolete but still in use and still sucking up tax money.

The final bill to the city will exceed $110 million. Toronto taxpayers are shelling out another $15 million for the inquiry.

Read the whole thing with especial attention to the references to Tom Jakobek.

A lot of people would have voted for Tom Jakobek in his run for mayor had he not been caught in a foolish lie about a stupid plane trip (at the time, most people assumed that he accepted a free ride. Turns out it may have been figurative as well as literal.)

What was presumed to be ethical idiocy has expanded to something worse, but the decision was made in January to end the first phase of the inquiry early so they could focus on the city's dealings with two US based consulting firms. As the article notes, in 2002 provincial police found no grounds to file criminal charges against any of the players.

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Toronto Affairs

Apr. 2 - Yet another reason to wonder if Toronto will ever grow up to be a responsible adult: T.O. surplus fight heats up (excerpts):

Toronto council has no choice but to spend almost all of last year's $39-million budget surplus on items recommended by city bureaucrats, insists budget chief David Soknacki. Councillor Jane Pitfield last week complained that city officials recommended spending most of the cash instead of leaving it to politicians to determine what to do with the money.

Never mind that bureaucrats wasted millions of Toronto taxpayer dollars in the MFP affair because the City Council approved a bureaucrat-recommended contract without reading it. Who runs this city, anyway? I don't recall elections for any of the bureaucrats. more...

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