Ontario Hansard - Native Land Dispute

NATIVE LAND DISPUTE

Mr. Garfield Dunlop (Simcoe North): Following on the incompetence of the Minister of Public Infrastructure Renewal and his Lottogate scandal and the embarrassing position the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration has put the McGuinty Liberals in with the slush fund scam, we now have another $330,000 being wasted with the so-called replacement of Liberal-appointed Jane Stewart as a negotiator in the Caledonia occupation. Imagine being paid $1,300 per day and ending up with no results.

As Janie Jamieson, spokesperson for the aboriginal protestors, says, "Having Jane Stewart at the table ... all the time and money spent on her. How much is there to show for that? Not much at all."

The citizens of Ontario are frustrated, humiliated and outraged with the fiasco in Caledonia. We are now on day 433 of the land occupation. It has cost the OPP tens of millions of taxpayer dollars out of their budget. It has cost the Ontario taxpayer millions of dollars in land purchases-lands that are still under occupation. The McGuinty Liberals have promised compensation for Caledonia residents and broken those promises. What have we achieved? Absolutely nothing.

Ontario taxpayers deserve much better use of their valuable tax dollars, but what is one to expect when the captain of the slush fund team is also the part-time Minister of Finance and chair of the Liberal re-election campaign?

We have seen no leadership from Dalton McGuinty and his Liberal government. They don't even have the courage to visit Caledonia, unlike our leader, John Tory. Somebody over there on the Liberal side should have remembered that the Chrétien human resources minister responsible for the billion-dollar boondoggle was probably a poor choice as a negotiator in the very beginning.