Trapped in Suburbia…

The fact that the Ontario Liberal Government’s eHealth plan appears to have been nothing more than a mechanism to shovel money into friendly pockets isn’t news anymore. But what is news is that Dalton McGuinty and Health Minister David Caplan appear to have been lying when they suggested PriceWaterhouseCooper was retained to perform an independent audit of eHealth’s books.

The CBC is reporting that no contract was ever signed.

This despite the fact that Dalton McGuity said (in June):

I think we need to wait for the report coming from PricewaterhouseCoopers. We need to wait for the information and the advice to come from the auditor.

David Caplan also dodged questions in the legislature saying he looked:

…forward to the recommendations and insights they might have on ways in which we can strengthen the financial controls and the management practices at eHealth.

The NDP, however, has newly released documents obtained under Freedom of Information show that no contract was ever awarded to PriceWaterhouseCooper – a fact that has been confirmed not only by PriceWaterhouseCooper but also by the board of eHealth Ontario itself.

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It’s been over 10 years since I left the hallowed halls of academia. That being the case I may not be current on the latest trends in creative statistical-analysis. I’m fairly certain, however, that logic has been around since Aristotle.

Sadly it doesn’t seem like IANSA’s Elizabeth Mandelman – a Masters student at the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs  - got the memo.

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Plurium Interrogationum, latin for “many questions”, is the logical fallacy that occurs when someone presupposes something that is not proven to be true. Wikipedia says the following:

This fallacy is often used rhetorically, so that the question limits direct replies to those that serve the questioner’s agenda. An example of this is the question “Are you still beating your wife?” Whether the respondent answers yes or no, he will admit to having a wife, and having beaten her at some time in the past. Thus, these facts are presupposed by the question, and in this case an entrapment, because it narrows the respondent to a single answer, and the fallacy of many questions has been committed.

Certainly, the blogosphere is plagued by a predisposition to fallacy. I didn’t find it particularly surprising, then, when I was forwarded a link to a blog by Elizabeth Mandelman. According to her blog, Elizabeth is working towards her Master’s in Public Policy at the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. Elizabeth is in Canada, working for Project Ploughshares as part of the IANSA global campaign to stop the “proliferation of small arms”.

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Yesterday I mentioned that the Courtyard Group, a consulting company founded partly by former Ontario Liberal campaign chair John Ronson, had received $4-million in untendered contracts from eHealth Ontario. In completely unrelated news the Globe and Mail reports:

The Ignatieff Liberals have raised $3.9-million in the second quarter for this year, four times the amount raised last year at this time when Stéphane Dion was leader.

The party posted its results on Twitter Wednesday evening with an update that read, in part: “Exclusive 2nd Quarter Fundraising numbers are in: $3.9M More than 4 times last year’s.”

Coincidence, I’m sure.

Mention envelopes stuffed with cash and most people will instantly think “AdScam”. Afterall, if shoveling cash into your friends pockets were an olympic sport the federal Liberals would be heavy with gold medals. It doesn’t come as much of a shock then, that their Ontario provincial counterparts have joined in on the action.

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