Accountability required to prevent pork barrelling

During these times of deficit spending, and economic stimulus announcements, it is important to ensure that taxpayers' dollars are not being misappropriated. Without proper accounting, we face the spectre of U.S.-style pork barrel spending.

To that end we debated an Opposition motion last week calling for a number of checks and balances as the money goes out the door. Specifically, we ask for disclosure of spending project names; the nature of the project; the provincial electoral district in which it's located; the amount of provincial funding; other funding partners and the amount of their contribution; and the department and program from which the funding is being provided.

We need accountability, with respect to Ontario’s massive allocation of taxpayer money, ostensibly, to battle the recession and create jobs.

Certainly, US Steel workers, autoworkers and others laid-off need those assurances as they stare down the barrel of mass layoffs. Are they going to be stimulated by this spending? Will these dollars save jobs at the Hamilton and Lake Erie works?

We have to be transparent. We need to know where those taxpayers' dollars are being spent and what it will mean to those who are now looking for work. If we don't have that kind of accounting, we become subject to the same regrettable pork-barrelling scenarios we hear of so often south of the border. I think of the Bridge to Nowhere- that's in Ketchikan, Alaska, not Caledonia’s Sterling overpass – or the Big Dig in Boston, which cost $4-billion-a-mile to put an Interstate underground.

Pork-barrel politics usually refers to spending intended to benefit the constituents of a politician in return for political support - perhaps for campaign contributions and, at minimum, for votes. Typically, pork involves funding for government programs whose economic or other benefits are concentrated in a particular area but the costs are spread among all taxpayers. Would the recent $9-billion GTA transit announcement fall into that category?

Perhaps some Toronto MPPs have fears about re-election. They lobby Mr. McGuinty. They're duly gifted billions of dollars, for example, for a high-speed rail line between Toronto and the airport. I do recall the pork-barrel proposal for a high-speed rail line from Las Vegas to Los Angeles. So the question: Would a Las Vegas rail line or a Toronto airport rail line get the steel mills open? Could these projects be considered pork-barrelling? How would they compare to the Opposition proposal of a tax holiday on vehicle sales, given the evidence it would increase car and truck sales and increase steel output?

I have little doubt after this past budget day, when the McGuinty government's plan, entitled Confronting the Challenge, was introduced, will be long remembered it as the day when political euphemism smothered economic disaster.

There are no words available to express fully what I consider the irresponsibility of directionless political spending. Government seems to have lost its helm. I'm not sure who's at the tiller.

While pork-barrelling in times of prosperity is foolish and negligent at best, to continue to pork-barrel in times of economic crisis, like we've seen over the past year, is unforgivable.

I ask this government to do the right thing: Ensure that we don't fall into the pork-barrel trap, and ensure accountability for taxpayers' dollars.