Niagara: Kingdom of Corruption

Long before we had our sparkling new Burgoyne high level bridge connecting East and West St. Paul Street in St. Catharines, Ontario, 'News Alert Niagara' sounded the Alarm as to the seriously deteriorating condition of the valiant century old former structure.

People were gratified with the announcement that the bridge replacement would be moved up by 7 years.

Niagara Citizens were stunned to discover how the price of the new bridge spiraled out of control to the tune of $tens of millions driving the price from $59Million to over $100Million!

Along comes 2016 and we are treated to ridiculous bovine waste of ‘those in control at the time are no longer with our 'regional government' so we’ll just have to make sure it doesn’t happen again!’

Our response to this dismissive rhetoric was ‘BULLSHIT’! 

Anyone that has had anything to do with these gargantuan losses need to be dragged back, identified and held accountable! Find out who is responsible for lost documents!

It’s bad enough when you have a cock-up of $hundreds or even $thousands but when the losses range into $TENS OF MILLIONS the question must be raised: where the hell is the outrage?

To date we have the regime’s task force's internal probe, a value-for-money audit and a forensic audit. There is also an Ontario Provincial Police investigation.

Really?

Did they do a personal forensic audit on those in control or is that reserved for non-government people? Is there any chance that unaccountable $Millions would be overlooked if those in charge were not regime personnel?

NOT HARDLY!

Now years later we have the so-called ‘task force’ calling for an investigation into the investigation! 

They are also calling on the City of St. Catharines for help with the missing records. The city politicians are more interested in their own political persona than they are in the missing $Millions of taxpayer dollars.

So, 'News Alert Niagara' braved another personal appearance to the first Regional Regime Council meeting following the Standard's report to witness what should have been an explosion of concern for missing and unaccounted $millions of taxpayer money! 

Sorry but Nothing!

They did mention that the Audit Committee would be meeting at 9:30 AM Monday so we stalled the posting of this article to report on the explosion of concern that would surely occur.

Nope Notta, zip, zilch!

However, all was not lost! Following the audit report the councilors did show concern regarding municipalities exceeding their debt limit and who would suffer the burden in case of a default as pointed out at the 57 Minute Mark.

So once again we are being told to let bygones be bygones predicated on $Tens of millions of hard earned tax dollars unaccounted for but fear not because "we have better oversight now"!

Sadly, it appears that there are several suspected projects with more unaccounted $Millions. In fact, there are many projects of questionable necessity other than to be used for fleecing the taxpayer.

To put it succinctly the regime’s proffered excuses are pathetic!

This silent Council is in charge and this silent council failed in its duty to safe-guard the Taxpayer’s hard-earned money! At best this apathetic Council allowed incompetency or worse the distinct possibility of criminal activity. Silence is consent!

Those in charge are the people the Citizens of Niagara hired and elected to faithfully discharge their duties. The last CAO of Niagara committed perjury in court documents and now our current CAO is also under investigation for Corruption. 

Although common in all levels of Canadian Government the costly time wasted on political intrigue and criminal activity is totally unacceptable. 

The Citizen has no ability to correct the activities of the hired help. That is what we voted this obviously inept and failed council to do. 

However the voter can and must use their power of the vote in an attempt to acquire better councilors who will do the job.  

PS: We are fortunate that interested folk can Click Here to follow Regional politics from their own home!