A recently approved Freedom of Information request by the Toike Oike reveals the contents of a letter Stephen Harper received several months ago from past UTSU executives. As firm believers in transparency and accountability in the democratic process, we have published the letter’s contents.
“Dear Mr. Prime Minister,
We represent the 2014-2015 executive council of the University of Toronto Students’ Union. As experts in media wrangling, policy obfuscating, and political arm twisting, we feel obligated to offer your government some pointers on damage control for what is, quite frankly, a trivial spending scandal within your Senate and cabinet.
The first mistake you guys made was setting up any expectation of accountability and good money management. If you write overspending and waste into the budget, you’ll have a lot more wiggle room for corruption. For example, we budgeted $172 000 for member services staff during the 2013-2014 year. Yes, we paid that much to members who sell entertainment tickets and create advertising for the UTSU. That’s more than the stipends officially given to the execs for the year. Hope you’re taking notes, Mr. Harper…
Of course, most of this money was actually used to pay for important staff functions, not that it was sufficient. We had to make do with a lukewarm gruyere and black truffle (ugh) fondue fountain with gilded bread cubes at our last exec meeting. That’s way worse than ice cold camembert with broken crackers. And our Dom Perignon wasn’t even chilled properly, so it went flat within the hour.
Let’s not forget how bad you guys are at covering up scandals. Your attempts at misdirection in the Mike Duffy trial were laughable. You should have just paid him for disgusting amounts of overtime that he couldn’t possibly have done (we did that, and we’re totally going to get away with it), stonewalled by citing personal privacy concerns, since information regarding funds collected from the public for public services is obviously protected by personal privacy protections. Other good tactics include trying to bribe your electorate with trivial fee cuts, free hot chocolate, or straight-up hand-outs to constituents, but at least you already figured that one out.
Well, the private jet just landed on our island, so that’s all the time we have for you. Good luck with all your future lucrative enterprises.
Toodles~~~
Cam Wathey ‘n Crew“
