Toronto City Council’s Wasteful Spending Part One

by John Laforet
posted on October 31st, 2008 at 23:55:28 pm

Yesterday, Toronto City Councillor’s office expenses were put into the public realm, but hidden on the City’s horribly designed website. Over the coming days, I will pick individual expenses of Councillor’s offices to discuss and share with those who are interested. If you share my view on the importance of respecting tax payer’s money, you should be outraged by some of what the City’s custodians deem appropriate expenses. 

I have decided to share individual examples of waste and inappropriate expenses in hopes that residents can be more informed and maybe in some cases call on Councillors to refund taxpayers for the expense. I know of at least two cases so far where I think this is a reasonable request. As I dig deeper and share these cases over the next little while, I will share too my opinion of cases where I believe repayment is a reasonable request. 

I am going to link to the City’s public access to these documents, but first want to show you step by step a member of the public who does not read this blog will need to take to get there. 

This is like choose you’re own adventure. You can click here and go directly to the database or follow these eight easy steps below to find it yourself. 

Step One: 

http://www.toronto.ca/

Step Two: 

Click “Accessing City Hall” (It is one of sixty one options on the first page, excluding the four pull down menus)

Step Three: 

Click “Council Expense Reports” (It is option five of thirty eight in the menu on the left hand of the page)

Step Four: 

Scroll up to the top of the page and click “Routine Disclosure of Expense Records” (It is option three of seven and not to be confused with “Council remuneration and expense reports quarterly or annually”, or “Office Budgets”

Step Five: 

Click “Office Expense Reporting” at the bottom of the paragraph in the middle of your screen.

Step Six:

Click “Details” of any Member of Council you choose

Step Seven:

Click “Invoices” for any category you would like. 

Step Eight:

Click “View” for any expense you would like to see.

With directions like this no one could ever think that Toronto Councillors are at all embarrassed about what may be found in their expenses could they?

I mean it is practically right there for all to see.

Stephen Harper’s Cabinet Keeps Canadian Alliance Promise

by John Laforet
posted on October 31st, 2008 at 00:56:34 am

Stephen Harper appointed Peter Kent to Cabinet as Foreign Affairs Minister (Americas). I was surprised because when I first saw this appoint on the TTC TV it said “Peter Kent, Foreign Affairs” and I thought they must have been kidding. That being said, when I later found out he was “Foreign Affairs (Americas)” my first thought was about that time when the old Reform and Canadian Alliance leaders used to support the idea of putting our Ambassador to the US in Cabinet.

I don’t want to go into how profoundly wrong I think this decision is and a demonstration of hard right Conservatism’s lack of support for Canadian sovereignty. Our only saving grace is Barack Obama is days away from becoming President and after Harper’s “back-Clinton-to-support-McCain-in-Ohio” and the NAFTA Gate fallout, Obama probably won’t want to play ball all that much. 

Here is Harper’s quote on his record on this front before. 

“That is why I have named a Canadian Alliance critic specifically for Canada-US relations. It reflects my view that, whether elected or not, our ambassador to the United States should have cabinet rank. This will directly link the activities of our government in Ottawa to our activities in Washington.” - Stephen Harper, September 9, 2003

And We’re Back!

by John Laforet
posted on October 30th, 2008 at 18:41:31 pm

Ok. Wow. Phew!

So www.laforet.ca went off line suddenly two days ago for no particular reason. Anyone who knows me would appreciate how little understanding I have of servers and all of that stuff. But it appears some kind of hardware issue at Dream Host – knocked me offline for two days. 

Replying to emails wondering if I had thrown in the towel or what the deal was – was not a good feeling. Being offline for two days also allowed the other “John Laforet” to overtake me in google once again. Let’s hope that is a short visit at the top. He is my uncle so it is a friendly familial rivalry. 

Tonight – I was in the process of setting up a blogspot account to be tentatively titled “John Laforet’s Blog (In Exile) where I was to continue on until Dream Host got their stuff back together. But tonight they did and I am grateful to them. 

My reason for hosting with them is entirely based on their commitment to minimizing their environmental impact. They provide Carbon neutral web hosting by using 100% renewable electricity to power and cool their servers. That is what the “green hosting” tag at the bottom of my site is all about. 

Anyways – I am happy to be back.