Interesting revelations from Alberta’s Auditor General:
Former premier Alison Redford’s staff listed “false passengers” on government flights in order to block others from flying with her, shows a report from Alberta’s Auditor General.
In an internal government report obtained by CBC News, Auditor General Merwan Saher found that Redford’s staff entered fake passengers into the government’s online booking system and then erased the passengers before printing a final flight manifest.
“We were told by [the premier’s] office staff and multiple staff from the Department of Treasury Board and Finance that for certain flights the remaining seats available on the plane were blocked to restrict access to Premier Redford on the aircraft,” part of the review states.
“The implications of this practice were that other government employees or elected officials would not have been able to travel on those aircraft.”
Update: Charles Adler discusses the scandal with Lorne Gunter.
She was such a queen.
That would be the “Red Queen” Checkmate!
For limousine liberals, such as herself, no treatment is too good for them when it’s at the expense of others.
Former advisor to Joe Who, time with the U.N., it fits.
More fodder for the Canadian left wing morons who believe the Alberta PC’s are “conservative”, and another slap in the face to Albertan’s who voted for Wildrose.
I really enjoyed the photo of Alison that the National Post has used today. She’s spectacularly beautiful.
http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/07/29/auditor-finds-fake-passengers-booked-on-plane-so-alison-redford-could-fly-alone-report/
anyways…
The next Alberta election is expected between 1 March 2016 & 31 May 2016
Some recent polls are here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/29th_Alberta_general_election
No doubt she’ll be lawyered up and able to put her trial off for a year. Next fall would be almost perfect timing, with her led away for her 1 day in jail. Further fueling the rage at these imbeciles during the election to follow a few months later.
Her staff doesn’t book these flights, and then cancel them upon their own direction. I doubt they put cream & sugar in their coffee without Alison’s approval.
*double funny too, if the RCMP doesn’t act upon this, and after a suitable period of time we discover the RCMP’s unlawful seizing of firearms in High River and Alison connection.
Liberal in P.C. clothing.
My mistake.
P.C. = Liberal.
Yea Marc, like she ran a federal police force, why dont you guys get out the torches and pitchforks, she is gone, she made mistakes, there is a reason people are flocking to Alberta and it isnt because it is being run like Ontario or Quebec it is because we all have work and you clowns still carry on like half the worlds problems are because of the people operating a 45 billion a year company called Alberta are bad just bad. Move on, there is unlimited opportunity here, you can seize it. Your uneducated blow up doll that thinks she has all the answers while never even running a lemonade stand sure as hell didn’t create this abundance the last 40 plus years.
I’ll be making my donation to the Wildrose.
I guess bartinsky will be voting PC….again. History repeating itself.
If the RCMP really wanted to get to the bottom of Redford’s corruption, they should haul in each of the office staff who likely would have booked her travel and threaten to charge them with an offense that would see them serve prison time. They’ll get talking faster than an auctioneer on 10 cups of coffee!
The Alberta debt, that she played a large part in inflating, will soon be at a similar range to the pre Klein days. 2 years? It seems an inopportune time for cost cutting, these last 2 years of a mandate.
That as well, is her legacy. So much so that people will soon enough have forgotten who was Premier prior to Mr. Klein.
I’m unsure who you think is “my uneducated blow up doll”. A higher education isn’t necessary for effective governance, only the fortitude to make a few good choices, something Alison and her ilk seem to be lacking.
The RCMP acts as the provincial police force, it’s a contract between Princess Alison’s government and the federal gov’t.
*pleased that you didn’t have any argument with me referring to her as “spectacularly beautiful”
This report is most likely true; however what aggravates me is that most of the revelations are coming from the PC’s themselves. It just has a bad odor to it…like when I pass gas and blame my dog.
After today’s news that upper managers received 7% pay increases (for civil servants) I am now convinced that there is not a single shred of honesty left in the entire PC party. They can hang for all I care.
Correct analysis. Premier Redford. Princess to the purple born.
She even through out the Magna Charta with its provisions on innocent first before guilty.
The Progressives (I will not dignify these kleptocrates with Conservative) are rotten to the core . Entitlement to them is a camp song. As you said 7 percent increase for going from 0 debt to 43 billion.Promises broken all over. The gun grab. The endless balloons Went up for a sales tax.Like these pigs didn’t have enough money to abuse. These folks all of them need to be kicked out like the thieving bums they are. Along with the most corrupt health care piggy bank in Canada’s history.
we need a work free environment where Unions are not mandatory with recall. Its that simple. To many Easterners have come here to pillage us yet again.Oh I almost forgot she took Klein’s law about not going over budget, & used it like Obama does the American constitution.She with her many aides & bureaucracy spit on our heritage. Not that she was alone. This PC party are closet socialists who think they are an aristocracy with the freedom to ran-sake us all.
Under her along with Red Ed we have lost most of the Alberta advantage, for greedy self interests who are wolves in Marxist clothing.
Shame on us really we all knew she was a UN shill. That the PC party was full of corruption from years of majorities.
Watch for a bevy of hard drive crashes.
Whatt?? It doesn’t work? Ohhh…..
It’s clear that AB politics need a good enema to shake out the turds that have strangled the Alberta advantage.
Its the oil, you idiot, that’s at the bottom of Alberta’s wealth, plain and simple. It sure as hell isn’t the leadership? of the PC. There’s no way this province should have a deficit or debt. Period. The PC’s have been in power for far tooooo long and have abused it to no end. Redford bought the teacher’s vote for a cool 100 million to become premier. You expect me to vote for that party. Kiss my butt.
By the way we have a sewage lagoon on the edge of town. At sunset, if you catch the light just right, it too is “spectacularly beautiful”.
“spectacularly beautiful” has a note of sarcasm to it? 😉
The 100 million that you refer to, I think it’s closer to 2 billion that was topped up in the teacher’s pension funds, and this is in addition to the amount the gov’t had already agreed to cover, about 4 billion.
So that’s quite a chunk of change from the total Alberta gov’t debt. Nobody else gets this cushy of a deal…
http://www.canada.com/calgaryherald/story.html?k=54850&id=5da88ea1-893a-46bb-bee1-d5c56cbc6e57
The debt clock..
http://www.fortmacleodgazette.com/2014/canadian-taxpayers-federation-brings-alberta-debt-clock-to-fort-macleod/
These are serious allegations against any politician let alone a premier.
The one good thing here is that the mounties do not answer to the province and there could be a proper arms length investigation. Not likely but possible.
One would hope that if a breach of trust by an elected official occurred, appropriate charges will result.
“…Your uneducated blow up doll that thinks she has all the answers while never even running a lemonade stand sure as hell didn’t create this abundance the last 40 plus years.”
Did Premier Alison Redford create that abundance the last forty plus years, or would you say that Premier Ed Stelmach helped lay the foundations of her success?
Oh yeah. She’s ugly in every sense of the word.
I thought of something else as well. There was/is an old saying about people who had a high opinion of themselves that “they thought their sh*t didn’t smell”. Much like the lagoon.
Hey Marc, do you have a mortgage on your little house or did mommy leave it to you? Most of us borrow money to get ahead, as long as there is inflation it is a great motivator for the motivated to get ahead, ever thought of that. Alberta can borrow money and spend it on roads hospitals and schools, your wet dream wants to have 500 billion in the bank like Norway, well I’ve lived in Norway and it should be called No Way because all the money in the bank does little for anyone else than the bankers there fool.
She thought she was the Queen of Alberta and above the law.
Inflation is entirely a function of gov’t debt, unless of course you’re printing your own money in your basement. Are you suggesting the more gov’t spends, the less it has to pay back due to the inflation it creates? That’s high comedy right there.
and,
I’ve never suggested the wealth generated by mineral sales be shut away for x amount of time as Norway has done.
I don’t know why you’re talking about Norway, or how you associate it with “wet dreams”, or the health of my mommy, or the ownership status of my “little house” or the size of my house. Is there anything else you’d like to make up to suit your argument?
The problem isn’t the billions that gov’t in Alberta gets to spend on “roads, hospitals, schools” as a result of not too prohibitively high taxes. The greater problem is it’s addicted to spending to feed the gov’t habit of paying for people’s retirement. The debt it has spent since Premier Klein’s gov’t passed legislation to not spend the province into debt again, has been wasted on paying for pseudo professionals like teachers and nurses that have the self proclaimed intelligence to save enough for their retirements without having normal taxpayers shell out for this. This debt, is a future tax. Those in the future, haven’t approved of its spending. Those that haven’t approved of it don’t get the benefit of it, unlike you do from owning your house.
It’s theft. All gov’t deficit spending is future theft. It’s taken the current crop of imbeciles less than 1 decade to spend this amount of other people’s money since the celebrated 100th anniversary of being Alberta, and being 100% debt free. The envy of all other jurisdictions.
What a waste. What a waste of +40 years of legacy.
The added insult to taxpayers of having a fleet of aircraft on someone else’s dime is not easily washed away. Nor today’s news of giving the highest earning provincial civil servants raises a year after saying there’d be no more raises for the next 3 years.
Maybe the PC”s are more addicted to lying than spending other people’s money? I’ve not made up my mind on that one yet.
Have your Princess Alison’s replacement call an election so I can decide…
Princess Alison had better hope there’s no taxpayers on her jury.
I am curious to know more from the Hon. bartinsky about the lemonade stand that former Premier Redford had run before entering politics. Her success in this entrepreneurial venture appears to be one of the reasons that the Hon. bartinsky prefers her to the Leader of the Opposition.
I wonder, also, if the Hon. bartinsky has been able to obtain a “blow-up doll” of former Premier Redford (or Mr Preekntice, for that matter — who am I to judge?).
Having a fleet of government-owned aircraft is like inviting your subjects to take a hike.
Alison Redford: living proof that Albertans are just as politically astute as Ontarians.
No.
We’re getting sucked into a rush to misjudgment here – what Redford’s people did was book seats they didn’t want used and then drop those fake bookings before the flight to avoid filing false documents. This wasn’t fraud, this was a work-around for a bug in the flight reservation system that prevented them from booking more than one seat per passenger.
Establishing a privacy zone around vips is common practice – Mulcair and Trudeau do this on both private jets and commericial carriers.
What Redford did was PO the manderinate by using their air fleet for her own purposes while freezing their salaries – and, whatever her faults, this charge is a bum rap; a piling on to an already defeated enemy of the public service.
“Alberta can borrow money and spend it on roads hospitals and schools, your wet dream wants to have 500 billion in the bank like Norway”
Forget about Norway. I’ve lived in Ralph Klein’s Alberta where we built roads, hospitals, and schools with ZERO DEBT with oil at $30 per bbl. Don’t give me your bullshit about it being necessary to borrow $40 Billion into debt just because Ed Stelmach blew an $8 Billion annual surplus and then Red Ali parlayed it into -$40 B buying Public Sector Union votes.
bartinsky >
“there is a reason people are flocking to Alberta………….., there is unlimited opportunity here”
Yea, only they’re not coming to Alberta for opportunities the way you may be suggesting.
Every successful economy or “boom town” ends up with bottom feeders pitching they’re tents on the outskirts of town.
The only difference here is that they’re living in +$400K homes in NE Calgary and drive BMW’s.
Forget the RCMP (which DO answer to the Alberta gov’t as they are under contract to same): call in the CRA auditors. When an employer pays for an employee’s spouse to go along on a business trip, that’s a taxable benefit to the employee (except under the rare circumstances where the spouse is required to take an active part in the work). Ms Redford took her daughter (and, upon occasion, friends and nanny) on many business trips, paid for by her employer; that’s a taxable benefit in my eyes. And there are suggestions that, at least on one occasion, the government jet was used so Ms Redford wouldn’t have to cough up the airfare for her daughter.
This would be a wonderful time for CRA to show they don’t just go after the little guys, as recent reports state they are perceived to, and will also investigate those who lawyer up.
For a remake of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” I’d nominate Redford to play the part of Nurse Ratched. The facial expressions and capricious personality similarities are striking.
To paraphrase CBC’s “Double Exposure” parody of the haughty Adrienne Clarkson:
“I’m Alison Redford and you’re not”
Hopefully the “Progs” keep the Red Queen in caucas. She is the masthead for the good ship entitlement.
As for Bartinsky, I never thought I would ever say Alberta should curtail its development but with bringing in massive amounts of easterners who think liberals are center right politically Alberta is being inundated with Progs. Calgary now has another liberal mayor that is a selfish taking Agenda21 tax and spender.
These CINO’s need to be kicked to the curb and soon. The election could be called as soon as late this fall.
Paul m….you obviously forget these people work for ME and every other taxpayer.Now get off your taxpayer supplied computer,and get a job.
A couple of thoughts.
Those of you who wanted to run off Ed Stemlach … congratulations, and in future, be careful what you wish for.
Second, if the national CBC was as one-tenth as tenacious at uncovering real scandals, there would be no need to defund them.
Here’s the Red Queens statement. Calling Mr. Ripley…
July 29, 2014
I have read media reports related to a leaked, draft report from the Auditor General and have the following comment:
I have not been provided with, and therefore have not been able to read the draft report, but I have cooperated fully with the Auditor General in the preparation of his report and will continue to do so.
I understand from the media that the draft report refers to certain flight booking practices in the Office of the Premier. I would be surprised if these allegations are true, but in any event, I also understand that the draft report makes clear that these were not practices that I had any knowledge of, which reflects my comments to the Auditor General.
It would not be true to suggest that I flew on the government plane alone. Despite the allegations raised today, as far as I am concerned there was never any directive preventing others from flying on government aircraft when I was a passenger. In fact, on most occasions that I can recall, when I was on government flights, I travelled with other elected officials, public servants and staff.
Alison M. Redford,
“Those of you who wanted to run off Ed Stemlach … congratulations, and in future, be careful what you wish for.”
Special Ed was/is a Prog just the same as Red Ali is. It is maybe a difference in degree, not in kind.
It was Ed Stelmach who unilaterally tore up the Alberta government’s contracts with the Energy Industry and blew away the $8 Billion dollar surplus.(and it was a REAL Surplus because Alberta was DEBT FREE)
Yeah, Ed put us on the road to exactly where we are by the same methods as Alison Redford’s, buying the Public Unions votes Today at the cost of all Albertan’s Tomorrows.
And you never learn, setyoufree, because you have no principles.