Call it a settling of accounts. Premier Doug Ford has named former B.C. Liberal premier Gordon Campbell to head an independent inquiry into Ontario’s finances under the defeated Kathleen Wynne government, which had a public disagreement with Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk over the size of its annual deficit.“The books were cooked. The deficit numbers were false,” Ford said Tuesday of the $6.7 billion in red ink for this year. Lysyk calculated the deficit at $11.7 billion because of a different treatment of pension assets. Campbell has been given a deadline of Aug. 30 and a $50,000 paycheque for six week’s work “to shed a light on the shady accounting tricks and shut them down forever,” Ford said Tuesday, when he also announced external firms will be hired to do a “line-by-line audit” of government spending.“The commission will give you the answers about what went wrong and the line-by-line audit will give you the answers on how we can fix it,” he said.The budget for both exercises — which Ford promised in the June 7 election campaign — has been set at a maximum of $1 million, which New Democrat MPP Peter Tabuns said is a waste of taxpayers’ money when the province already employs an independent auditor like Lysyk who issues detailed annual reports, and a financial accountability officer who regularly examines public finances.“They’re tough, they’re professional, they gave the last government a hard time. Everyone should have confidence that they’re the ones who can actually do the job,” Tabuns told reporters, adding that Lysyk is “not a lap dog, she’s a pit bull.”“If you’re going to dig, use the people who are already in place, that we’re already paying for. Don’t spent another million dollars bringing in an outside team,” he said, calling the deadline for Campbell and his team is “a very tight timeline.& ...
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