Liberals Should Pay Back Government For Partisan Flights

Freedom of information documents reveal that Premier McGuinty is flying around the province on private jets at taxpayer expense. This wouldn't be a problem if it was reasonable travel, for government purposes and fully transparent. Unfortunately for taxpayers, the travel meets none of these criteria.

Instead, the premier often travels for partisan purposes and hides this fact by not using his own budget. He buries the expenses in other departments and forces the public to submit freedom of information requests to discover what he is 'up' to (pardon the pun). The premier should have his wings clipped.

Apologists suggest that the premier is so important that he should be able to fly around to save his precious time. There is some truth to this. However, partisan flights at taxpayers' expense are not acceptable. The Liberal Party should pay back all that was spent on travel by the Premier for politicking. When Premier McGuinty flew to Windsor to be on stage with then Prime Minster Paul Martin during the 2006 election, for example, that wasn't legitimate government business. That was Liberal Party business and the taxpayers of Ontario shouldn't be on the hook for the $6,000 bill.

Premier McGuinty made a very big deal about banning partisan advertising saying, 'every dollar spent on partisan advertising is a dollar wasted.' He should take his own advice. Every dollar spent on partisan flying is a dollar wasted too.

As well, flights on government business should be reasonable and transparent. Is flying his plane around empty 194 times reasonable Of those empty flights, 62 were moving his empty plane from Pearson Airport minutes away to the Island Airport in Toronto. That is $124,000 worth of flights just so the premiere's limousine can save ten or fifteen minutes in travel time. Further, there are 78 flights to Ottawa. Is this legitimate What about all of these photo-ops We ask civil servants to make do with video conferencing. Wouldn't that save money and use less fossil fuels

There is an important transparency issue here that the premier seems happy to avoid. It is difficult to determine how much the Liberal Party should pay back to taxpayers as we don't really know why any of these flights were taken and we don't know who was on them. For all anyone knows he was flying the Liberal campaign team around. In Alberta they avoid this mess by publishing the flight manifests for all government flights. This lets taxpayers know who was flying where and when. The Ontario government should do the same for all ministerial flights.

Like Icarus, Premier McGuinty likes to fly about. Unlike Icarus it is taxpayers who are getting burned this time. The Liberals should make flights more transparent, pay back what they owe, and the premier should keep his feet on the ground more often.