Watch the video above: Metrolinx perks still in question. Mark McAllister reports.
TORONTO – Metrolinx officials and the transportation minister are adamant Metrolinx employees are no longer receiving treats like TIFF tickets or Buffalo Bills tickets despite a report from the Toronto Sun claiming the agency signed sponsorship deals after a directive from the province to end the perks.
“This is three years old, this happened in 2011. As soon as Bruce McCuaig, the chief executive officer, discovered there was issues he shut it all down,” Transportation Minister Glen Murray told reporters at Queen’s Park Tuesday. “People don’t get tickets, any tickets go to charities now and that’s been the case since 2011, which if my math is correct, that’s three years now where there hasn’t been an issue.”
The Toronto Sun reported Tuesday that documents obtained through a freedom-of-information request show that McCuaig was notified of the directive to stop the practice on April 20, 2011 but months later signed a $30,000 sponsorship deal with the Toronto International Film Festival and a few months after that, a deal with the Rogers centre for the NFL “Bills in Toronto” Series.
As part of those sponsorship deals, Metrolinx would receive tickets to the Bills game as well as TIFF screenings and parties. The newspaper wrote that after the ban on perks came into effect on Aug. 2, 2011 Metrolinx employees attended “several exclusive galas and sponsor events.”
Despite the allegations, Metrolinx spokesperson Anne Marie Aikens told Global News that McCuaig took “immediate action” in 2011 to end tickets being given or sold to employees.
“He implemented changes because we fully agree that the controls weren’t adequate and they weren’t sufficient and we made changes,” she said. “So that was in 2011 and going forward the tickets have been used, if we received them at all, exclusively for fundraising opportunities.”
“They aren’t meant for staff to attend,” she added.
She insisted the public transit agency declines tickets but they do sometimes go into partnerships with cultural organizations to sell “packages.” An example she used, was selling a GO Transit ticket in a package with a ticket to the Royal Ontario Museum.
But Rosario Marchese, the NDP’s transportation critic, was quick to suggest Metrolinx had not “learned its lesson.”
“There was a directive form the ministry that these things should not be going on in 2011 and Metrolinx disregarded that,” he said. “I think that’s a problem, I think that’s a complete disrespect and disregard for people’s money. It doesn’t offer any service.”
He also pointed out that Metrolinx had recently spent $1.1 million on advertisements over the past 12 months, some of which aired during the NFL’s conference championship games in January. While Metrolinx and Kathleen Wynne suggested at the time that Metrolinx’s mandate included educating the public, Marchese suggested Tuesday the ads and the perks contribute to distrust of government agencies among the public.
“In order to build their trust they have to be careful with how they spend people’s money and they should be worried about service and not ads that don’t promote any kind of service that people are looking for,” he said.
– With files from Mark McAllister
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