Taxpayers footing bill for gas plant email recovery

At Queen’s Park, the opposition continue to hammer the Liberals over what they claim is an attempt to hide the true cost of cancelling gas plants in Mississauga and Oakville.

Yesterday the governing Liberals delivered three thousand more emails, almost a year after claiming everything had been handed over. The opposition parties say the lengthy delays are costing taxpayers over $3 million – money that could have been spent elsewhere.

NDP MPP Gilles Bisson: “We’ve spent hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money, essentially trying to fix a political problem for the Liberal party. Imagine what we could have done with that money, we could have put it to transit, we could have put it to health care, we could have put it to education.”

Conservtive energy critic Vic Fedeli says “The very idea that taxpayers will have to foot this bill is ridiculous. Now, more than ever it’s clear we must use the byelections to send the message: ‘quite frankly, enough is enough.'”

Ontarians in five communities will go to the polls in a byelection August 1st. Something else they’ll be considering: a poll by Forum Research says 45 per cent of Ontarians think a crime was committed in the gas plant scandal, while 52 per cent feel premier Kathleen Wynne knew about the purge of emails relating to the plants, by senior party staff.