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Tory leadership front-runner Ernie Eves, the former finance minister who brought us cutbacks and fiscal restraint, claims to favour Main Street over Bay Street. Oh yeah?
THE MAN ABOUT TOWN
Eves’s monthly expenses while he was Ontario finance minister
Meals: $1,500
Groceries: $1,200
Laundry and dry cleaning: $500
Entertainment: $500
Toiletries and sundries: $200
What Eves spent on fancy clothes and “recreation” during his last year as minister
Clothes: $25,000
Watch, ring and cufflinks: $5,000
Vacation: $17,500
Recreation: $9,000
Albany Club membership: $1,000
Leafs platinum club seats shared with ex-wife: $5,850
Cost of a porterhouse steak at Bigliardi’s, an Eves hangout: $33.75
THE COOL DIGS
Rent on swanky Queen’s Quay West condo he lived in as MPP: $2,950 a month
Amount his ex-wife claims the family trucking company loaned Eves to subsidize the condo rental: $48,000
(Eves denied this)
THE NORTHERN RETREAT
Amount Eves was spending on Muskoka cottage: $2,900 a month
Amount he spent on repairs: $12,000
Amount he spent on “furniture, linens and kitchen items”: $30,000
While Eves was living the high life in Toronto, how often did he manage to get back to his Parry Sound constituency? Only Eves knows.
Number of trips to Parry Sound Eves claimed through the legislative financial services and purchasing department during his last year in office: 0
THE EXPENSIVE CAR
Amount his ex-wife says the family business loaned Eves toward the purchase of a Lexus automobile: $14,744
(Eves denied this)
THE FISCAL NOT-SO-CONSERVATIVE
Eves’s total monthly income while finance minister: $9,290.30
Eves’s monthly expenses while finance minister: $21,313.40
Eves’s total salary as finance minister: $111,000
Amount Eves owed on Bank of Nova Scotia line of credit (as of August 2000): $391,000
Estimated value of the art collection Eves owned jointly with his former wife: $200,000
THE BAY STREET POCKETBOOK
Eves’s current salary as vice-chair and senior adviser, Credit Suisse First Boston Canada: Rumoured to be seven digits
Total value of Eves’s legislative pension (as of March 2000): $790,000
Other past sources of income
President and director, Tudhope Cartage (Eves had an option to acquire minority shares in a Tudhope Cartage holding company that he couldn’t exercise while he was a minister)
Partner in Parry Sound law firm Green and Eves
THE WELL-TO-DO LIFE PARTNERS
Victoria Gail Eves (ex-wife), daughter of Royce Oscar Macklaim, who purchased Parry Sound-based Tudhope Cartage Inc. in 1969 president, Tudhope Cartage
Isabel Glenthorne Bassett (current “life partner”) chair and CEO of TV Ontario former Tory minister of culture and citizenship widow of late CTV boss and media mogul John Bassett sold Rosedale home on Binscarth Road in January for $2.9 million now lives on Roxborough Street
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