All rise. Kangaroo court is in session, Ontario’s “Government for the People” presiding.Like kangaroos, politicians are a peculiar species, given to strutting and kicking. Coverups are second nature as they try to hide their tracks — fiscal, political and personal — to throw rivals off the scent.But predators, partisans and premiers are always in hot pursuit. Doug Ford created a legislative committee last September to ferret out the truth about “quite possibly the worst political coverup in Ontario’s history.”The multi-billion-dollar question: What’s the real budget deficit?The Liberals first predicted a $6.7 billion in their last spring budget, while the auditor general pegged it at $11.7 billion. Not to be outdone, the Tories came to power insisting on a $15 billion figure — since deflated to $12.3 billion when the financial accountability officer gave a second opinion Monday.Pick a number, give or take a billion.Finance Minister Vic Fedeli — whose deficit numbers disagree with all others — predicted Ford’s special committee “would get to the bottom of the coverup ... and will begin to restore trust in Ontario’s books.”But a kangaroo court does not engender trust. The Tories’ tribunal is a marsupial and mercurial beast, jumping up and down like the deficit numbers — hippity hop.It will be remembered for refusing to call the one witness at the centre of the high-stakes accounting dispute that bedevils the government’s books: Cindy Veinot, the former provincial controller also known as the government’s chief accountant.A non-partisan public servant, Veinot signed off on the Liberal government’s books for two years, concluding they were a fair representation of the province’s finances. During much of that time, she was at loggerheads with the independent auditor general, Bonnie Lysyk, who disputed Veinot’s interpretation of com ...
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