Exposed:  Northern Life editor, Mark Gentili’s “bully” explanation is factually flawed
Credibility of “paid news” is questionable

Furthermore the editorial is filled with inaccurate information about labor relations issues in the City and allegations against MacDonald have no connection what-so-ever to the cleaning of bathrooms. This lack of connection is there despite the fact that The Ontario Human Rights Tribunal noted that the City’s Water Plant Supervisors did not perform cleaning duties and would leave their mess. As such, it can be concluded that Gentili has underhand contact with City’s bureaucrats and he is thus under obligation to publish their “paid version of the news.”   

There is no logical analysis or explanation of the allegations. “Northern Life publisher and reporters are a call away and located within driving distance.” – this is the only explanation provided by Gentili and it is both juvenile and laughable. The lack of a definite and credible explanation cleared all doubts, and facts are now being further established. It is clear that MacDonald is under City bureaucrats’ payroll. WikiLeaks Sudbury found that Gentili’s editorial “is poorly written and intimidating.” The editorial is an attempt to detract from the enormity of MacDonald’s journalistic practices and nothing more.

Northern Life has again lost its credibility and readers need to be more cautious about articles written by MacDonald. 

To read Gentili's editorial Click Here

Northern Life Editor Mark Gentili’s editorial maintains secrecy of the bureaucratic agenda at City hall
Credibility of “paid news” questioned once again

Crown dropped fraud charges: Conspiracy exposed
City did not submit Original copy of the false affidavit to the Court

Gentili: 'Underhand' connection to TDS ?

The Crown dropped the fraud charges related to FOI request submitted to the City (Please click here to see abstract of Court decision). The Case was heard at the Ontario Court of Justice (Criminal Division) on October 10, 2013. The City claimed that the false affidavit was submitted to access the information under the Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. The Court also found that the City’s complaint has no merit and no public interest to continue inquiry.  The Ontario Court of Justice is a superior judicial authority than the Tribunal. A recent editorial (August 26, 2014), written by Northern Life editor Mark Gentili, provided false, misleading and inaccurate information and are now facing allegations that their City hall reporter MacDonald is under bureaucrats’ payroll.

Ironically, regardless of the editorial’s deceptive nature, Gentili quoted “We believe readers are intelligent people capable of making their own decisions. Our job is to give them accurate information. Northern Life takes that duty – and our responsibility to you, our readers – very seriously”. WikiLeaks Sudbury also believes readers are intelligent people capable of making their own decisions. Read More 

To read Gentili's editorial Click Here

Released on September 03, 2014, 3:00 AM EDT
Tag #: 672

Dark side of Nodorozny’s Sorry Saga
 



Transit Ticket Scandal: Privacy Commissioner’s office ordered to release KPMG external audit report
(IPC Order # MO-3056)


Nadorozny: Lack of accountability   Canapini: Bad legal advise

It can no longer be denied. The City of Greater Sudbury is in a serious corruption crisis. It's time we started confronting it as the serious outrage it is and address the accountability issue. As much as it is an outrage however, it is equally a tragedy.

City bureaucrats have been blowing thousands of tax dollars in yearly conference trips, fine dining, and at least one all-expense paid trip to Vancouver for a mayor Marianne Matichuk plus her chief of staff who is a well-connected individual to the provincial legislature.

The City of Greater Sudbury citizens lost over $800,000 of their tax dollars and still no one has claimed responsibility for it. When the scandal surfaced, Doug Nadorozny, Chief Administrative Officer already declared that he would make sure no one would be accountable for this loss of public funds. He apologized but it is a far cry from what Sudbury taxpayers expect and deserve. The City’s legal services department’s leading City Solicitor, James Canapini, made every effort to keep this scandal as secret. Similarly, Kevin Fowke, Director, Human Resources and Organizational Development, kept secret any disciplinary actions imposed on employees who were involved with the scandal. This is indicative that no one received any disciplinary action.

 A review of the revenue processes was initiated at Greater Sudbury Transit during the period of December 1, 2007 — December 31, 2007 by the City’s external auditor, KPMG. Some months later, it was discovered that the 1211250 Ontario Inc. owed more than $800,000. This discovery was made upon the City’s development on reporting and monitoring procedures related to the ride card and pass inventory. This information was kept secret and not available to the public until July 2011. It was made available by the new Auditor General, Brian Bigger.  The KPMG external audit report was not released to the public and was completely buried by City’s bureaucrats before then.

Auditor general condemns 'scandalous' agenda

Brian Bigger, City Auditor General

On or about July 11, 2011, Auditor General Brian Bigger started an audit on Transit Ticket sales contract between the City and 1211250 Ontario Inc (Company). The City’s legal service department denied access to the records. City Solicitor Jamie Canapini argued they were covered by solicitor-client privilege and that the records were the property of city council. As such, he advised them not to turn them over to the auditor. Bigger’s office then spent $20,000 on outside legal advice in an attempt to gain access to the documents. Interestingly, audit committee chair and Mayoral candidate, Ron Dupuis, attempted to write-off this loss of public funds from the books and argued that the public has no right to know internal affairs of the City hall. Ron Dupuis’ position on the matter is that information should be released to the public on a “need to know” basis only.

WikiLeaks Sudbury has been following the scandal from day one and took legal actions to obtain the records under the Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. The City did not release the KPMG external auditors’ report, which contained vital information about the transit ticket scandal.  In order to therefore increase probability of success in the legal proceedings, WikiLeaks Sudbury took a two-prong approach. WikiLeaks Sudbury submitted an appeal to access records of the auditor General’s draft report and KPMG external auditors report.

WikiLeaks Sudbury won the legal battle against City’s bureaucrats and the Privacy Commissioner’s office ordered to release the KPMG external audit report. 

The KPMG External audit Report reveals that there are more issues that need to be addressed. It is unclear when this situation started and how it escalated, and why it was not detected untill 2008. Also, the public has no assurance of whether the situation is under control and being properly monitored. Furthermore, the audit revealed that due to consignment sales and other distributions, the numerical continuity of ride cards and passes was not accurately maintained.

This report clearly indicates that the Transit Ticket scandal is a result of lack of oversight and incompetence of the bureaucrats in City hall.

In depth KPMG Audit Report
KPMG Audit report: Summary of Findings

1.0 Inventory Control of ride Cards and Passes

There is no control over who has access to ride cards and passes, and although there is an individual who keeps a manual spreadsheet for tracking ride card sales and existing inventory, the numerical continuity of the cards was not accurately maintained.

The report states that boxes of cards and passes are kept unsecured in “an individual’s office”. Either the individual who’s office it is, is responsible for the missing money or others have access to said individual’s office, in which case, the person or persons responsible is anyone who has this access. The report also does not clarify if the employee of the Transit Office that maintains the spreadsheet is the same individual who’s office is used for the storage of the cards and passes. Also, the report states that the reason behind the inconsistency of numerical continuity of the pre-numbered ride cards and passes is a result of consignment sales and other distributions. Consignment sales, however, is no excuse not to record those sales. This level of disorganization is unreasonable and bears the question of whether or not they were purposely omitted from the spreadsheets. If they were purposely omitted and not simply a cause of incompetence in record keeping, then it would be interesting to know who the distributors were and where exactly the bulk sales went to. Are the names of the distributors recorded somewhere, or is it just the number of passes and ride cards sold in bulk that are not recorded? If the names of all the distributors are being recorded, it would indicate the Transit Office is not trying to hide something, in this case, it could be the distributors that are responsible for the missing money.  Or perhaps both the authorized (and possibly unauthorized) distributors of passes and ride cards and the bureaucrat(s) of Transit Office are working in collaboration for this corruption.

2.0 Sale of Ride Cards and Passes

In the second observation written in the report, it is noted that “the same individual in charge of maintaining ride cards and passes inventory is also responsible for invoicing and the receipt of cash and cheque payments” They also noted that no one is checking for consistency between inventory and sales on a monthly basis as it should normally be done. This demonstrates that whoever decided it was a good idea to have only one person responsible for everything from inventory to invoicing to receipt of payments, severely lacks managerial skills.  Additionally, without any supervision of these responsibilities, it is quite easy to misuse and abuse the distribution of ride cards and passes. With only one person handling all that, it is easier for fraud to go undetected until it is too late.  What is therefore astonishing is that once it was discovered that a large sum of money was missing, no one was held truly accountable, and to further add to it, it was hidden from the public for about three years, from 2008 when it was discovered to 2011 when it was finally publicized. This creates doubt about whether the people hiding the scandal had an incentive for doing so. What could the incentive be? Could it be a bureaucratic attempt to cover-up their own incompetence or could they have had a well-calculated (or rather poorly-calculated) part in it? Are the City of Greater Sudbury bureaucrats pocketing taxpayer dollars?

3.0 Consignment Inventory

The third observation in the report states that the city has five retailers to which it provides ride cards and bus passes on a consignment basis. It states that it is therefore “impractical to prepare a reconciliation of sales and inventory at any point in time”. The five retailers, because of their un-willingness to pre-pay for the ride cards and passes they receive, use this consignment term. This therefore means that the City has to invest trust in these retailers that they will not pocket the money from the sale of the cards and passes, since according to consignment terms, goods are sold at the risk of consignor (Transit Office/ the City). This also demonstrates that the five retailers do not want to take responsibility for any loss of the goods or revenue. In order to solve this, a credit system between each of the five retailers, the Transit Office and the City can be established, just as it has already been successfully established with the Transit Office and the City’s other retailers.

4.0 Unearned Revenue

The fourth observation in the report states that there is a Transit Office employee that is responsible for preparing a calculation of unearned revenue associated with the ride cards and 31 day passes. It is however a ridiculous concept that serves not much more value than satisfying plain curiosity of how much service is owed to customers. This is because it is impossible to accurately guess the time at which a person will begin using their 31 day pass or ride card. This therefore results in a calculation that is unreliable. There is therefore no point in focusing on calculating the unearned revenue since it will not provide any material value to the City, and instead is causing a waste of money by paying an employee to make these trivial, time-consuming calculations. Once again the City’s managerial incompetence can be seen, as this has been an ongoing practice in Transit Office for some time. It would therefore be more constructive to calculate what actually makes a material numerical difference, in order words, focusing on accurately and properly recording inventory, sales, and purchases.

It seems unfathomable that such a lack of oversight and incompetence has been taking place within the City of Sudbury’s institutions; that bureaucrats who are supposed to be acting in the best interest of the public could be so careless with public funds as in the case of the transit passes and ride cards. If our City bureaucrats cannot even handle proper operation of something as simple as public transit, how are the people of Sudbury supposed to trust them with matters that involve heavier intricacies and respectively a higher level of competence. This neglect of the welfare of Sudburians is also selfish and lazy, qualities that do not make for a strong community. Furthermore, the lack of transparency in the attempts to hide scandalous information that the public deserves to know creates even more suspicion and again, a lack of trust in city officials. City bureaucrats need to get off their high horse and actually be productive in meeting the needs of the public, starting with the proper and morally lawful way of handling tax dollars.

-------------------------End

Editorial
Released on September  03, 2014 at 2:00 AM EDT

The article initially published on  Perspectives on Politics, 11(4), 1015-1033 . Excerpts from the article as follows.

Bully vs. theory with the actions of two e-bandits, Anonymous and WikiLeaks

Anonymous and WikiLeaks both share the key characteristics of e-bandits. Both of them rely heavily on the notion of anonymity in their work, whether in how it goes about soliciting information (WikiLeaks) or as its primary activism tactic (Anonymous). They are both also promulgators of the idea that citizens deserve more access to information that the powers that be hold in secret.

Our current understandings of the roles of transnational social movements and non-state actors in international relations are just beginning to grasp the importance of the Internet, largely focusing on the role and responsibility of the state in digital governance. By contrast, we intend to advance the thinking on how non-state actors can harness information technologies for political gains on a transnational level through engaging in a new politics of no one.

What e-bandits show us is that technology changes resistance. To date, many have considered the role of technology as a way to retool existing ways of participating in citizen movements. Instead of collecting signatures for petitions in parking lots, people can use digital signatures procured by mass e-mails. Groups can cut costs using listservs for a planned protest. Webpages serve as publicity vehicles for activists, and blogs democratize who can opine. Here, we argue that the anonymizing potential of the Internet challenges some of our fundamental assumptions of who can use technology, and for what ends. Prior to the Internet, protest occurred much in the “old way”— citizens gathering in public demonstrations, holding placards, and making speeches against state policy or corporate greed. Neither WikiLeaks nor Anonymous necessarily employ these techniques in their methods of holding actors accountable and expressing discontent with policies or actions. Instead, both organizations hold others accountable in a way that does not reveal their own identities, and as such, the threat of their action is both a threat from nobody and potentially from everywhere at the same time. This “politics of no one,” in which e-bandits make demands without revealing who they are, or who they speak for, affects the way that we conceive of contemporary forms of global citizen action.

The politics in which e-bandits engage are anything but business as usual in new technological clothing; the actions of e-bandits are extra-ordinary. First, as political actors, e-bandits are more akin to Robin Hood than the American Association for Retired Persons, politicking not through lobbying, but by “taking” what has been deemed off limits. Furthermore, Anonymous and WikiLeaks both explicitly see themselves as taking from the powerful to empower the disempowered with information and access to the political process. Second, e-banditry forces us to think about how technology changes “ordinary” transnational activism. Iconic images of street protests and massive marches often underlie the way we as scholars think about social movements and citizen action; they are ordinary ways we expect non-state actors to behave when they demand political change. E-bandits protest with virtual missives and actions, activity that leaves no physical traces but has real world consequences, as when home phone numbers and addresses of public officials are released.

Finally, e-banditry is relatively open in terms of who participates, which contributes to the growing sense that activism has outgrown organizations as the way by which individuals connect. To the extent that we can identify the “groupiness” of Anonymous or WikiLeaks, what one can say is that both organizations appeal to broader audiences than ordinary activist groups. As others have found, Anonymous’ founding credo was anything but political, and its actions continue to be precipitated and fueled by different kinds of activists than those attracted to other groups heavily reliant upon the Internet, such as Moveon.org. Participating in Anonymous’ actions online is not an option for just anybody, as there are baseline technical knowledge requirements. As a consequence, the anonymity under which e-bandits act provides us with a conceptual and theoretical challenge in terms of how we place these groups.

Social movement scholars have demonstrated that activists build organizations and coalitions and try to change the way things work through inhibition, provocation, and information. In short, social movements are “people with common purposes and solidarity who mount collective challenges to elites and authorities . . . [with] mobilization around particular norms.” Social movement organizations enable transnational participation, bringing nonlocal activists to different sites. Activists’ identities are reified and recreated through participation in social movements. Some social movements have not been averse to breaking the law and private property, for instance, through civil disobedience techniques such as the Black Bloc. One can imagine that e-bandits are engaged in a battle over information beyond political change, as they want to change the way information is distributed, but many of the demands have been “anti.” The fundamental role the Internet plays in e-banditry distinguishes them as a community, which at once requires specialized skills, but also is inclusive and widens the doors for different kinds of individuals to become politically active and involved in a broader public interested in defending a set of principles. Some have seen the shifts enabled by the Internet as pivotal in changing how we think about social, political, and economic relationships.

Editor
WikiLeaks Sudbury
September 03, 2014