Perth-Wellington MPP Randy Pettapiece, in the Legislature last week, unveiled expenses of $526,649 by the three-member horse racing industry transition panel.
“I was a little surprised,” Pettapiece said of the money already spent by the team, which has been studying ways for the industry to survive since the provincial government announced the cancellation of the Slots at Racetrack Program (SARP). The program provided funding to the horse racing industry based on slot revenue.
But Pettapiece is not faulting the team itself for the bill.
“The whole story is about government mismanagement, it’s not about whether these guys are getting too much,” he said of the team, which consists of former cabinet ministers John Wilkinson, John Snobelen and Elmer Buchanan.
Pettapiece, who defeated Wilkinson for the Perth-Wellington seat in the 2011 election, received a copy of the expenses after a Freedom of Information request.
The expenses were incurred between June 2012 and March of this year. The transition team is expected to deliver its final report to Premier Kathleen Wynne in October. However, the premier indicated she would be looking for a report covering the industry for the next five years, a move Pettapiece said would add to the growing expense tab.
Team members are billing taxpayers $750 a day for attending meetings. However, Pettapiece pointed out those meetings are “often just for making conference calls.”
The MPP said since the government cancelled the SARP about 90,000 horse industry jobs have been lost and the financial loss to the industry has been $850 million.
“We all need to know how this premier justifies putting thousands out of work, and then spending over half a million cleaning up the government’s mess,” Pettapiece said.
Wynne responded in the Legislature on Sept. 12, saying the panelists have expertise in the horse racing industry and Pettapiece “knows how important it is to have people like that giving us advice.”
Wilkinson said the three-member panel was chosen because of their political expertise. Wilkinson was a Liberal cabinet minister, Buchanan a NDP cabinet minister and Snobelen a Conservative minister.
The panel, according to Wilkinson, is a “non-partisan” team advising the government on ways to improve the industry, with its focus on a five-year plan to make the industry “vibrant” and “sustainable.”
Wilkinson maintains the expenses are in line with government regulations and have always been “transparent” to the public. “We’re all former cabinet ministers,” he said. “We all know what we submit to the government is going to be transparent.”
Wilkinson said the government abandoned the SARP after determining that about $335 million contributed to the program was never properly accounted for to taxpayers and the government.
Wilkinson added he expects the team will meet its October deadline to complete the report. After that it will be up to the provincial government to make the document public.
“We’re in the home stretch,” Wilkinson said.
