Last month, the British government took action to punish Sinn Fein. The government’s move follows a series of bank robberies that were committed in Northern Ireland and suspected to have been done by the IRa. These crimes include the robbery of a bank in Belfast in which the take was the largest haul of cash in the nation’s history.
Northern Ireland Secretary, Paul Murphy, announced in the House of Commons that the allowances of the four members of Sinn Fein, including Gerry adams, would be cut. The monies that are being withheld are in the vicinity of 500,000 or approximately $1.2 million Canadian. The Secretary was quoted as saying that the withholding of the allowances were "designed to express the disapproval of all those who are committed to purely democratic politics at the actions of the Provisional IRa."
While this seems like a drastic measure, perhaps the withholding or taking away of perks and allowances from misbehaving politicians is an idea whose time has come in Canada. There would, however be a problem in applying this principle to the federal government. The amount of monies that the federal Liberals have diverted, stolen, given to their many friends in Quebec or otherwise misappropriated makes the take from Britain’s largest bank robbery look like chump change. Besides, even if you took away the allowances and perks of all federal Liberal MPs, they would find ways of replacing it. Unlike the successful bank robbers, these guys are really pros when it comes to the acquisition of money that belongs to other people.
It would be equally counterproductive to apply this principle to the government of Ontario. It would be nice in theory to take money away from Dalton McGuinty every time the Ontario premier uttered a statement that was somewhat less than truthful. But Mike Harris did such a great job reducing the welfare rolls in the province that we wouldn’t want to see them increase by having Dalton and his cabinet be forced to go on welfare. Besides, Dalton doesn’t get enough in salary, allowances and perks to truly be able to punish him for his lies. Taking away everything McGuinty has would not be punishment enough for his "you won’t pay a penny more in taxes" statement.
But the idea just might work with Toronto City Council. although council is constantly increasing property and business taxes, user fees and TTC fares and thereby making life more difficult for hard working Torontonians and pensioners, they don’t have quite the sticky fingers that the federal government has. and they are nowhere McGuinty when it comes to telling the truth to their constituents. Toronto City Council makes no bones about grabbing more of their taxpayers’ hard earned money to hire more outreach workers to deliver coffee to the homeless, giving grants to their favourite special interest groups and have plenty of cash on hand to give large wage increases to their union buddies for doing nothing more than, well, being their union buddies.
Still, council needs some help in keeping their spending down and taking away their perks and allowances might just help them get on the right track. although some constituents of the Sinn Fein MPs might suffer because those allowances have been withdrawn, it is hard to see how residents of Toronto would suffer if their councillors were deprived of such freebees as free parking, free TTC passes, use of a box at the Rogers Centre (Skydome) and all the other little goodies that they have become entitled to over the years.
We could institute a system that, for example, would see their free city wide parking being taken away for six months for every one per cent that property and business taxes go up. and when that’s all gone we should take away their Metropasses.
If a weekend becomes extremely violent, well, no baseball game for you, Davey. They get so many needless perks such as free parking, free transit, free zoo passes and free golf on city courses, that they should be used to control what has become a ridiculous level of spending that has been soaring during the last few years.
But we can’t take away all that free food that the councillors get at meetings and other events. It’s only a matter of time before the provincial or federal government declares an all out war on obesity. Then they’ll get theirs!
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