Following the Money

With my holiday dwindling away, it's time to begin to look into the world of politics once again. Looking through the proactive disclosure for Environment Canada, I noticed a numbered Ontario company getting $54 815.00 of taxpayer money for "Other Prof. Serv. - Management consulting - OGD or programs". I was curious what the numbered company (1286756 Ontario Limited) did. This lead to a search on the web for this company, gaining further government contracts netting 1286756 Ontario Limited contracts of $123 432.23, and$94 870.00 for a total of $273 117.23 since January of 2007. So some mystery company in Ontario netted over a quarter of a million dollars of taxpayer money.

You're probably asking yourself "So what?" Another interesting twist to this came out from my attempt to find out what 1286756 Ontario Limited does. The only references to the company were basically from government websites listing them as a contractor for services over $10 000. There was one other reference to this company, that was on the Conservative Party of Canada website as a campaign donor for the Tony Clement leadership campaign. The name attached to the company's donation is Tim Woolstencroft. Who's Tim Woolstencroft? Why one of the founding partners of the Strategic Council marking research group. So it would seem that the Tories have hired a marketing research firm owned by a party supporter. A pretty good return on a $500.00 investment on Mr. Woolstencroft's part.

Now this could all just be coincidence and I'm sure that the people involved will claim that. That being said, it is interesting that a party supporter is getting a bunch of fat Tory government contracts. At best the optics of this is bad, at worst, the Conservative government is looking no better than the Liberal one it replaced. If he wants to claim to be better than the previous regime, Harper has to actually be better. Doing the same thing isn't going to cut it.