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He grabbed headlines with pronouncements about the need for spending cuts during the recent debate on the city’s budget woes. But where would consummate right-winger Denzil Minnan-Wong take the city were he in charge of its financial affairs? We break down his resumé.
For the record
Talks ad nauseam about the need for “accountability and transparency” at City Hall but is part of the cabal that ran things from the backroom during the dirty Lastman years.
Remember the MFP computer leasing scandal? Minnan-Wong voted against an inquiry.
Claim to fame
Likes to say he championed the establishment of Canada’s first municipal auditor general. The reality is that Minnan-Wong headed up the task force ostensibly set up by Lastman and company to get rid of city auditor Jeffrey Griffiths after the latter started asking too many questions about some $300 million spent on outside consultants, some of it without receipts.
Privatize it
Favours turning over everything from water and electricity services to garbage collection and management of our social housing stock to private contractors. Experience elsewhere has shown that turning city services over to profiteers only ends up costing taxpayers more in the long run. (See also the Eucan monster bin contract Minnan-Wong supported.)
Dubious dissension
Voted no to the pay raise that boosts councillors’ annual salaries to $95,000. But are Minnan-Wong’s constituents getting their money’s worth from a councillor who splits his time between City Hall and an immigration law practice? Just asking.
Saving taxpayers millions
Now that’s a good one. Voted against giving Bombardier the contract for the TTC’s new subway cars (he was lobbied by main rival Siemens) even though it means thousands of manufacturing jobs for northern Ontarians.
Also supported blowing $10 million on a police helicopter we don’t need.
Did we mention the taxpayer dollars he helped divert to an unelected Port Authority so it could build a bridge to the Toronto Island Airport (he supported a fixed link) for the benefit of a few downtown business types?
A man of the people?
Sixty-five per cent of residents in Minnan-Wong’s Don Valley West ward are tenants, but the bulk of his political donations are from corporate sources and some of the most notorious landlords in the biz.
The bottom line
Has called the pesticide ban “council’s version of the gun registry.” So just whose interests is Minnan-Wong trying to protect if not residents and their health?
