Penashue's Extortion Action Plan

                               Peter Penashue's Extortion Action! Plan! concept via Canadian Cynic

Former Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs Peter Penashue ran for office in 2011 under the campaign slogan "Peter for All". Winning that election by just 79 votes, he resigned his Labrador seat last month over an ongoing Elections Canada investigation that found his campaign overspent and accepted illegal donations. 

So it was a bit of a surprise when he was back on the campaign trail last week bragging to his constituents that he held up a Newfoundland project for six months in order to get $85-million in funding for a highway for Labrador. 
Intergovernmental Affairs Minister for All indeed. 

He also claimed that when re-elected and re-installed as a Con cabinet minister, he would be instrumental in boosting pork to the Canadian Forces Base in his riding.

Tony Gazebo won his Parry Sound-Muskoka riding in 2006 by a mere 28 votes.
In 2008, following election endorsements from local mayors on his G8 slush fund tailgate committee which he used to misdirect $50-million in public funds intended for border infrastructure to gazebos and flower pots in his riding, he increased that vote margin to almost 11,000.  A pretty good deal at $2,290 per vote. 
Now he's President of the Treasury Board.

So however laughable it may seem to us at the moment, there's still a glimmer of hope for Penashue and his Economic Extortion Action Plan buy-election.

Creekside will resume its all-outsourcing-all-the-time coverage shortly.
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The G8 ShamWow Legacy Porkbarreling Fund

Of the $83-million Border Infrastructure Fund for "investments in infrastructure to reduce border congestion" approved by parliament in 2009 for the G8 summit, $50-million of it was somehow diverted into ShamWow Tony Clement's riding, 300 kilometres away from the border.

The Harper government had "misinformed" Parliament about the fund, said outgoing Auditor General Sheila Fraser in her G8 draft report in April, a word since expunged from the final report under the new acting AG.
It was simply the most efficient way to get funding to Tony's riding for the G8 leaders to spend 48 hours in, Steve explained last week.

However, many of the 32 projects jointly chosen by ShamWow Tony, the mayor of Huntsville, and the manager of the Deerhurst Resort were nowhere near the G8 site either :

— $274,000 on public toilets 20 kilometres from the summit site in Huntsville.

— $100,000 on a gazebo an hour's drive away.

— $1.1 million for sidewalk and tree upgrades 100 kilometres away.

— $194,000 for a park 100 kilometres away.

— $745,000 on downtown improvements for three towns nearly 70 kilometres away.

$1.8M in public funds was also spent upgrading the watermains and repaving the driveway to the 760-acre Deerhurst Resort : That's How You get a Road Done, while an additional amount went to installing an 8 km wire fence around the resort for G8 security.

All of which must have been good selling points when it was put on the market two weeks after the summit.
"We picked it up for $26-million," said new owner and Israeli entrepreneur Gil Blutrich of Skyline International Development, after noting the previous owners spent $40-million upgrading the resort for the summit.

Meanwhile, wearing his other hat as Treasury Board president, ShamWowTony is in charge of cutting $4-billion per year in federal spending. On Monday 92 federal auditor positions across Canada were eliminated and the department of Audit Services Canada was scrapped entirely. The reason given was that the auditing done by these government watchdogs in charge of ensuring taxpayers’ dollars are properly spent could be done more cheaply by a private sector company, should the government decide to, you know, hire one.

The RCMP are apparently considering whether to launch an investigation into what acting Auditor General John Wiersema called a "very unusual and troubling" complete absence of documentation for the Border Infrastructure Fund Greasing ShamWowTony's Riding Fund. Sure they are.
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