Niagara Falls is seen from the Canadian side in November of 2009.Peter Power/The Globe and Mail
All three of Ontario's major political parties bear responsibility for the culture of entitlement that developed among staff at the Niagara Parks Commission, NDP Leader Andrea Horwath says.
Last month, the Ontario Provincial Police were called in to investigate allegations of financial impropriety at the agency, which oversees tourism in the Niagara Falls area.
The criminal investigation comes on the heels of two government audits that found staff regularly broke the rules for expenses and handed out untendered contracts without justification.
Ms. Horwath said Ontario's next premier should call on the province's Auditor-General to conduct an independent investigation of the agency.
"I think we deserve to know what went wrong, what was done improperly," Ms. Horwath said. "And not only for the purposes of pointing fingers and laying blame, but to say how could this organization have gone so wrong in terms of their priorities that it was more about feathering nests and giving furtive deals."
Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak said problems at the commission are the result of a Liberal government that wasn't monitoring its agencies closely enough.
"The Niagara Parks Commission has been allowed to careen out of control under Dalton McGuinty," Mr. Hudak said at a campaign stop last week. "He's looking the other way. He's letting them waste taxpayer dollars left right and centre."
But a Globe and Mail investigation found that complaints about improprieties have dogged the agency for nearly a decade, including at a time when Mr. Hudak was minister of tourism, under Mike Harris's PC government.
Mr. Hudak was one of nine politicians who received a letter in 2001 warning of alleged financial misconduct at the agency. The letter outlined concerns about one commission executive's trips to Asia and alleged favours he granted to friends.
Joel Noden remained at the commission until he was fired in late 2010, amid revelations he had spent $400,000 on travel and entertainment in three years.
"Really, this is another mess left behind the Mike Harris government," said Liberal candidate Michael Chan, who served as tourism minister under the McGuinty government.
He said his government has taken strong action to improve the agency. Mr. Chan ordered a series of government audits and removed several members of the agency's board. He also appointed an expert in auditing and governance as board chairwoman and gave her a mandate to overhaul governance practices.
But Mr. Hudak said the Liberals waited too long to act.
"Dalton McGuinty has been there eight years," he said. "I'll put my record up against his any day of the week. If Dalton McGuinty wants to spend this entire election campaign talking about waste? Bring it on."
It took the Liberals until 2009 to make substantive changes to the commission, after an appointee to the commission's board raised concerns about untendered contracting.
Ms. Horwath said parties should stop looking for someone to blame and instead work on fixing the problems at the commission.
"I think the malaise at that organization has spanned all kinds of different governments," Ms. Horwath said. Asked if the NDP were a part of the problem as well, she said, "Yeah, well, I imagine so."
The Liberals have rejected past calls by the NDP for the Auditor-General to examine the Niagara Parks Commission.
"It's clear that the auditor general has the capacity to perhaps disclose things that would make the McGuinty Liberals or any past government nervous, or perhaps uncover skeletons in the closet," Ms. Horwath said.
"What I think we deserve is that independent, unbiased, disconnected look at what's happening."