CASINO EXPANSION PORK-BARREL
POLITICS: RUNCIMAN
The McGuinty government can’t find enough
money to keep dangerous criminals in jail but
can pony up $400 million to expand Casino Windsor
with a new 400-room hotel, a 5,000-seat auditorium
and 100,000 square feet of additional convention
space.
“Unbelievable!” says Bob Runciman,
Leader of the Official Opposition and MPP for
Leeds-Grenville.
“Just two weeks ago the Ontario government
announced it was shelving the second and third
phases of the St. Lawrence Valley Correctional
and Treatment Centre in Brockville because it
doesn’t have any money,” said Runciman.
“Yesterday the McGuinty government finds
$400 million to drop into Windsor, represented
by two of his cabinet ministers.
“This stinks to high heaven,” charged
Runciman. “It’s the worst kind of
pork-barrel politics.”
He said because of the appalling conditions
at the Ottawa Detention Centre, judges are reducing
sentences to hardened criminals by three days
for every pre-trial day spent there. Crying
poor, the government cancelled a facility that
would have provided relief for the corrections
crisis in Eastern Ontario. And 300 jobs are
being lost, new and existing ones.
“I guess this is another example of this
government’s priorities,” said Runciman.
“The government is starving hospitals,
laying off nurses, fighting with doctors and
facing teacher strikes and the most important
investment they can come up with is to spend
$400 million to expand a casino.
“There’s more than a little irony
in that it was less than a month ago the government
announced a moratorium on new casinos and expansion
of racetrack slot operations,” said Runciman.
Media Contact:
Bob Runciman
(613-325-1522)
