Candidate Paul Hong calls for end to Liberal waste

PC candidate Paul Hong with convenience store owner Jim Park, noting changes to the provincial lottery corporation have done nothing to help with business.

Caledon PC nomination candidate Paul Hong pledged to help put an end to provincial Liberal waste when he visited a local convenience store to highlight the controversial McGuinty government decision to spend $6 million dollars to re-brand the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation by simply dropping the word “Corporation.”

“Like so many others, when my family came to Canada in 1984 we came with nothing in our pockets,” said Hong. “It’s an insult to Dufferin- Caledon taxpayers that Dalton McGuinty chose to give his Liberal buddies a big, fat taxpayer-funded contract to come up with this ridiculous garbage.”

The McGuinty government recently announced its plan to change the name of the “Ontario Lottery Gaming Corporation” (OLGC) to “Ontario Lottery Gaming” (OLG). It was later revealed that the move to drop the

word “Corporation” cost Ontario taxpayers an estimated $6 million dollars to pay for the salaries of Liberal-friendly consultants and other associated costs.

“I happen to think that buying new MRI machines and replenishing our desperately depleted infrastructure would be a better use of taxpayer dollars than hiring consultants to drop the word ‘corporation’, said Hong. “I guess Mr. McGuinty feels differently.”

Hong also brought to light the fact that this move has done little to actually help small businesses in Dufferin-Caledon.

“Governments should be supporting small businesses, not wasting taxpayer’s money,” said Jim Park, owner of Jim’s Convenience Store in Caledon. “These new signs haven’t resulted in a stampede of new business for me. For the life of me, I can’t figure out why they thought it would.” This McGuinty decision

comes on the heels of their equally questionable decision to pay $219,000 of taxpayer dollars on Liberalfriendly consultants so that they could redraw Ontario’s trademark trillium symbol.

D u f f e r i n - C a l e d o n residents wanting to join Hong in his quest to put an end to Liberal waste can contact him through his campaign Web site at www.paulhong.ca. Hong has been a Caledon resident for the past 22 years. A graduate of the University of Western Ontario’s Richard Ivey School of Business and Osgoode Hall Law School, he is working at the international law firm of Stikeman Elliott LLP. Hong is also a Maritime Surface Officer in the Canadian Forces Naval Reserve (he is currently on leave from the military for the duration of the campaign).

The Dufferin-Caledon PC Association is selecting its candidate at a nomination meeting in Orangeville Jan. 13, 2007.