Letters to the Editor

Tax dollars at work?

December 18, 2025   ·   0 Comments

Auditor General Shelley Spence began her 10-year term on Jan. 8, 2024. She is appointed to a 10-year term by the Ontario Legislative Assembly after being anonymously recommended by a bipartisan panel of MPPs in December 2023. Shelley Spence works for the people of Ontario to ensure their hard-earned tax dollars are used in the best way for the people of Ontario.

Our Auditor general recently released yet another scathing report about the misuse of our tax dollars, revealing a lack of oversight, overspending, political favouritism, and waste from Doug Ford’s PC Government.

#1 Healthcare: Our Minister of Health, Sylvia Jones, and her staff are not properly overseeing doctors’ billings. The auditor pointed out that numerous physicians billed up to 500 patients a day and or 366 days a year.

This works out up to an estimated $665 million in tax dollars being lost to over-billing. At the same time, the auditor revealed that 2 million Ontarians still don’t have a primary health care provider. The audit found that the Ministry of Health and Ontario Health did not consistently have programs in place to plan or oversee initiatives to improve patients’ access to primary care providers.

Also, the Ministry of Health found itself with over 1 billion extra items of PPE from the COVID-19 outbreak. The best thing they could come up with was to burn all of it. The incinerated items cost taxpayers $1.4 billion. Sylvia Jones was unavailable for comment. This seems to happen quite often with Sylvia when its time to answer the tough questions.

#2 The Skills Development Funds Scandal: The $2.5 billion in public money for the Skills Development Fund is being misused by the Minister of Labour, David Piccini. The auditor pointed out that many of the successful applicants had political connections and or ties to Doug Ford’s PC party. There is a lack of transparency and secrecy on how applicants were chosen and how much public money they received from the Skills Development Fund. Smells like more corruption from the Ford PC’s.

#3 Advertising: The auditor general’s report revealed Doug Ford’s PC’s spent a record $112 million on taxpayer-funded advertising last year, with the province’s auditor saying 38 per cent ($42 million) was used in advertising to leave people with a “positive impression” of Doug Ford’s government.

The Ford PC’s spent more money on advertising (propaganda) last year than any other government in Ontario’s history. This does not include the $75 million spent on the anti-tariff ad that aired during the World Series in the U.S this fall, and we all know how effective that was for our tariff talks.

I think some of the people in Ontario vote for the same party over and over rather than the actual person running for office. It’s time to vote for a leader who has integrity, honesty, and the ability to speak to the people without marketing agents, expensive commercials, and teleprompters.  

We need a leader for the greater good of all of Ontario, not for the greater good of all their buddies.

We need a political party that isn’t being continuously investigated by the RCMP (Greenbelt Scandal) to this day.

We need a political party that does not spend our tax dollars like kids in a candy store. At the same time, we are in a housing, healthcare, mental health, homeless and addiction crisis. Our food banks are barely keeping up with demand.

Ford for the people?

 Terry Brooker

Orangeville

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