For the last four months, an all-party provincial probe has heard of CEO Dr. Chris Mazza’s reign at ORNGE including the promotion of his water-ski instructor girlfriend to associate vice-president, of a Porsche-driving board chair who pocketed $200,000 in compensation, of a senior employee with drug problems and another who was told to fake an MBA because it would impress investors.

Then there were the dreams and schemes of now-defunct ORNGE spinoff companies, lavish business trips, a $6.7-million marketing services agreement that is being investigated by the Ontario Provincial Police, and a $275-million “bond issue” to pay for a fleet of helicopters and office space.

Throw in a speedboat, a law firm that billed 22,000 hours and a couple of customized orange motorcycles and you’ve got the latest scandal of an agency that seemed to fly off the government’s radar.

Matthews is expected to face hard questions from the opposition-dominated public accounts committee about what she knew and when she knew it.

PC MPP Frank Klees wants Matthews to admit she failed both to live up to her responsibilities and to use the “authority she clearly had as minister to put an end to this abuse.”

OK, so Deb Matthews had a bad outcome as Health Minister. Let’s move forward.

In 2013 Matthews was involved in the handling of a sexual harassment incident. When this became news in May 2016, Matthews told us that it had all been managed very well. Here’s one article. I’ll give a small quote; emphasis mine.

TORONTO – Just take the Liberal government’s word for it.

That’s what Deputy Premier Deb Matthews said Tuesday when asked how Ontario’s Liberals can prove they looked into allegations of sexual harassment against a former caucus member.

Matthews wouldn’t say if the government would release a report penned by a third-party investigator or discuss the allegations against former Niagara Falls MPP Kim Craitor.

There’s a lot more in the referenced page; go read it for yourself.

OK, so Deb Mathews backed up the Premier of Ontario in a controversial, with withheld reports, incident. Let’s move on again.

Deb Matthews is now Deputy Premier of Ontario – the second most powerful provincial politician. She is also in charge of managing all government spending. That makes this next piece of news a bit discomfiting. Again, emphasis mine.

TORONTO — Ontario’s deputy premier says she “certainly didn’t know” about a reported $65-million reserve fund the public high school teachers’ union had when the government agreed to pay them $1 million for negotiating costs.

Deb Matthews, who is also head of the department that manages all government spending, wouldn’t say if the government as a whole or the bargaining team knew about it before they agreed to the payout.

Even better, this quote:

The Liberal government has defended $3.74 million in payments to several unions over the past three rounds of contract talks as necessary because the transition to a new bargaining system made the process quite lengthy.

Meanwhile, a tentative agreement that Ontario reached with elementary teachers may have ended their work-to-rule campaign, but it still won’t be mandatory for them to do parent-teacher interviews.

Questioning these points in order:

• How could the Minister of Health not have a clue about a lot of money going in very strange directions at ORNGE?
• Is a qualification for Deputy Premier being able to keep a straight face while saying, in effect, ‘trust us,’ and, ‘I don’t know if we’ll give you the report?’
• Do we expect the Deputy Premier to understand that a union, whose ‘negotiating costs’ are being defrayed with taxpayer dollars, that that union had lots of cash on hand?
• Is this a fine negotiating result: parent-teacher interviews are at the discretion of the teacher?

Those are rational questions. Now for some dumb ones:

• Why does Deb Matthews keep getting senior appointments in the Provincial government?
• Why does Deb Matthews never seem to have any problem ‘stick’ to her?
• Are Ontario voters, and taxpayers, all dumb sheep?

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