Taxpayers Federation and a listener follow up on our MPI $1.2- em, $1.4, million donation story

http://www.taxpayer.com/blog/15-07-2010/mpi-should-have-sold-surplus-building

MPI Should Have Sold Surplus Building

Two thumbs up to Marty Gold for doing some digging into MPI's recent announcement to sell its surplus building to Ma Mawi Wi Chi Itata Centre.

According to Marty Gold, the donation of MPI's surplus building on King St. was no small contribution - it reportedly has an assessed value of $1.2 million. Ideally, if MPI has a surplus asset, it should be sold off and the funds used to fulfill MPI's mandate - providing low-cost vehicle insurance to Manitobans.

Critics may argue that selling off the asset may have only reduced premiums by a couple dollars per vehicle, but that's not the point. Taxpayers should have the right to decide how their money is spent, not the government. Again, MPI's role is to provide low cost vehicle insurance, not to get into social policy and help the province appear to be doing good deeds (see Minister Andrew Swann's free publicity in the news release and at the press conference).

However, as we have seen in the past, the province clearly has a different view on the role of our 'beloved' crown corporation. Who could forget the Doer government's plan to use MPI's $20 million surplus for fixing up university buildings back in 2001 or the "secret donation" to the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in 2008?

While some would defend those initiatives as well-intentioned, few would come to MPI's rescue and defend its $10,000 donation towards buying gifts for out of town politicians.

Yes, that's right, back in 2006 when Manitoba hosted the Western Premiers' Conference, MPI and other crowns were asked to contribute towards purchasing gifts for visiting politicians. The Canadian Taxpayers Federation discovered the expenditures in 2008 so it didn't attract too much media attention, but it was discovered that MPI donated $10,000; even though they were only asked to contribute $8,000. How generous of them.

Spread the word folks, with an election coming up in 2011, candidates should be pressed to speak out against such manipulation of our crowns.

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From a listener:

Marty: I did hear back today from MPI customer relations and he did admit that the value was estimated at $1.4 million which would equate to $1 per policy. So if a person owns four vehicles, their share is now $4, not $1 as they are trying to say.

MPI also said they did not fully open it up publically but only consulted with one group of people and MPI did not feel a conflict of interest has taken place since the winning group was represented on the board.

I have made many calls to MPI general enquiries and guess what, no one can tell me exactly how many policies or customers exist with MPI. If nobody can tell me this, how do they know it is $1 per policy????????

Why did MPI not sell the land and offer up 20 different $50,000 grants to many different agencies or 40 grants for $25,000? Why is one part of the city (MPI is provincial) benefiting from this and not the whole province and many different groups. Sell the land/builing for $1.4, use $400,000 to administer the $1M in grants. This is a no brainer.

Why do our politicians continue to give young people reasons to leave this province instead of stay. We are becoming nothing more than a welfare state and we need to be progressive or this city will continue to deteriorate as the tax base waves bye-bye for better lands.
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Today at 4 PM, we are joined by Lee Goren and Barrett Fraser of 360Winnipeg.ca to preview the Winnipeg Sun Lee Goren and friends Autism Invitational, and at 4.25, Dr. Tim Ball addresses the claims that "the book has been closed" on Climategate.