Taxpayers stiffed again

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Letters to the Editor

16 November 2007

Last week Cornwall taxpayers and city council found out together that a Toronto law firm representing the city had negotiated a deal where Cornwall taxpayers were expected to pay $369,000 as their 40 per cent share of the cost of the Cornwall Community Police Service's legal bill from April until the end of September for the ongoing public inquiry. This is not the first time senior levels of government have stiffed Cornwall ratepayers.

A few years back our prominent local MP, who happened to be the deputy speaker of the House of Commons, was unable to pry $114,000 out of Jean Chretien's government to reimburse the Cornwall police for securing the international bridge during the Quebec City Summit. As the years of this seemingly never-ending inquiry pass we are starting to see the winners and losers of this whole process. The winners are the out-of-town lawyers who would have been paid hundreds of dollars an hour for the past three years. The losers have been taxpayers of Ontario and the City of Cornwall. We can only hope that something positive evolves from this inquiry to help the victims it was initially set up to help.

Glen Runions,

RR 2 Cornwall