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Remind me not to vote for her.
How can we find out who approved it?.
An Ottawa city councillor justified billing taxpayers nearly $6,000 for business class on a flight to a conference South Africa, saying Monday that she needed to get up and move around on the journey.
Diane Deans travelled to a conference in South Africa in 2012 as a board member of the troubled Housing Services Corp.
“It was a 17 1/2 hour flight,” Deans told the Toronto Sun. “I think you can appreciate with a really long flight like that you’ve got to get up and move around to stretch out.”
By contrast, another HSC board member flew to the conference at a cost of $2,199.
Deans, meanwhile, also insisted accusations levelled by PC MPP Ernie Hardeman Monday at Queen’s Park failed to paint an accurate picture of the spending on the South African conference trip.
Hardeman has obtained documents which show Deans submitted bills for the trip through her duties as a board member of the Housing Services Corp.
That organization, which is arm’s length from the Ontario government, has been plagued by an expense scandal for months. It could not give the Toronto Sun an exact break down of the expenses it paid for the trip.
Deans said she flew to South Africa primarily to speak at a social housing conference and decided to extend her stay as a vacation in advance of the trip, all of which was approved by the agency.
And while she denies billing taxpayers for wine tours and a visit to a nature preserve, she defended the agency’s decision to pay $5,596 to fly her business class to the conference.
Deans left the HSC board when her term expired in 2014. The agency is in charge of bulk insurance and natural gas purchases for the province’s social housing providers. The trip met all the agency’s rules at the time, she said.
“They agreed to pay seven days and I pre-submitted the expenses and asked for approval in accordance with the board policy and was pre-approved before I booked anything,” Deans said. “I was there for over two weeks but I paid all of those expenses. Any sight-seeing I did was on my dime, it wasn’t on the taxpayers dime.”
Deans said if she had to do it again, she’d ensure her personal expenses were clearly differentiated from the conference costs.
Hardeman said the expenses look like a “personal holiday” and it’s not clear who approved the spending since that information has been blacked out on documents, he said.
“It’s just hard to believe that anybody could even think that is a justifiable expense to the Housing Services Corporation or the people who are depending on social housing,” Hardeman said.
Hardeman, who has been a vocal critic of HSC, revealed the spending scandal earlier this year through a series of Freedom of Information requests.
“No one has done anything to find out how widespread this is and why it happened and secondly to do anything about it,” he said.
But in a statement to the Sun, HSC CEO Howie Wong said the trip in question would not have been approved under new agency rules.
“The expenses in question are from 2012,” Wong said. “They were approved under the previous CEO. Unfortunately we cannot speak to why that decision was taken as that individual is no longer employed by HSC.”
Mark Cripps, spokesman for Minister of Municipal Affairs Ted McMeekin, said when the ministry first learned of the expense problems last fall it took action. The expenses are not acceptable, he said.
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How can we find out who approved it?.
An Ottawa city councillor justified billing taxpayers nearly $6,000 for business class on a flight to a conference South Africa, saying Monday that she needed to get up and move around on the journey.
Diane Deans travelled to a conference in South Africa in 2012 as a board member of the troubled Housing Services Corp.
“It was a 17 1/2 hour flight,” Deans told the Toronto Sun. “I think you can appreciate with a really long flight like that you’ve got to get up and move around to stretch out.”
By contrast, another HSC board member flew to the conference at a cost of $2,199.
Deans, meanwhile, also insisted accusations levelled by PC MPP Ernie Hardeman Monday at Queen’s Park failed to paint an accurate picture of the spending on the South African conference trip.
Hardeman has obtained documents which show Deans submitted bills for the trip through her duties as a board member of the Housing Services Corp.
That organization, which is arm’s length from the Ontario government, has been plagued by an expense scandal for months. It could not give the Toronto Sun an exact break down of the expenses it paid for the trip.
Deans said she flew to South Africa primarily to speak at a social housing conference and decided to extend her stay as a vacation in advance of the trip, all of which was approved by the agency.
And while she denies billing taxpayers for wine tours and a visit to a nature preserve, she defended the agency’s decision to pay $5,596 to fly her business class to the conference.
Deans left the HSC board when her term expired in 2014. The agency is in charge of bulk insurance and natural gas purchases for the province’s social housing providers. The trip met all the agency’s rules at the time, she said.
“They agreed to pay seven days and I pre-submitted the expenses and asked for approval in accordance with the board policy and was pre-approved before I booked anything,” Deans said. “I was there for over two weeks but I paid all of those expenses. Any sight-seeing I did was on my dime, it wasn’t on the taxpayers dime.”
Deans said if she had to do it again, she’d ensure her personal expenses were clearly differentiated from the conference costs.
Hardeman said the expenses look like a “personal holiday” and it’s not clear who approved the spending since that information has been blacked out on documents, he said.
“It’s just hard to believe that anybody could even think that is a justifiable expense to the Housing Services Corporation or the people who are depending on social housing,” Hardeman said.
Hardeman, who has been a vocal critic of HSC, revealed the spending scandal earlier this year through a series of Freedom of Information requests.
“No one has done anything to find out how widespread this is and why it happened and secondly to do anything about it,” he said.
But in a statement to the Sun, HSC CEO Howie Wong said the trip in question would not have been approved under new agency rules.
“The expenses in question are from 2012,” Wong said. “They were approved under the previous CEO. Unfortunately we cannot speak to why that decision was taken as that individual is no longer employed by HSC.”
Mark Cripps, spokesman for Minister of Municipal Affairs Ted McMeekin, said when the ministry first learned of the expense problems last fall it took action. The expenses are not acceptable, he said.
[email protected]
