Did Ontario Premier Ernie Eves make a terrible goof when he canned Tourism Minister Cam Jackson recently for billing taxpayers $103,000 over 28 months, when high-living “Toronto boulevardier” Ernie’s spending habits make Cam look like a tightwad?

In February, I reported in great detail Ernie’s love of milking the taxpayer – including his platinum MPP pension trough of $810,000 received in 1997. (His pal, Mike Harris, received $864,000.) Ernie’s excessive spending on luxury travelling, accommodations and food were plainly spelled out. However, the mainline media decided to ignore it because they wanted pro-abortion, anti-family Ernie Eves elected premier of Ontario rather than pro-life, pro-family, hard-right Jim Flaherty. Now, they have discovered that winer-and-diner Eves likes to live high off the hog. But that’s certainly old news. Interim readers knew it months ago.

Then you have the hilarity of the Ontario Liberals adopting a holier-than-thou pose by denouncing Tory Cam Jackson’s ethics while federal Solicitor-General Lawrence MacAulay is accused of handing an untendered $70,000 contract for criminal justice advice to a buddy from P.E.I. In effect, he was saying: if you’re a MacAulay, you’ve got a job.

This was the same kind of caper that cost Art Eggleton his cabinet post last spring. Art looked terribly amused at a press conference recently in Ottawa, announcing his strong support for MacAulay. An Alliance spokesman said that Art didn’t have much support in the PM’s office and that’s why he got dropped, while Crouton could ill afford to lose MacAulay, one of his loyal backers in cabinet.

At Queen’s Park or in Ottawa, it’s either baloney or steak – depending upon who gets into office.

“Inaccessible Ernie,” as he was nicknamed in his Parry Sound riding, lived like a king. In total, the public cost of his salary, expenses, benefits, travel, accommodations and office staff ran to at least $350,000 a year. About $250,000 of this was for personal use. Yet, Ernie told Queen’s Park recently that he spent a little more than $104,000 during the six years he was finance minister. The Liberals charged recently the receipts for food and accommodation they obtained amount to almost twice what Ernie told the legislature he spent. Ernie also told the legislature that he never charged taxpayers for alcohol, but an aide hastened to run out and pay Ernie’s booze bills that were “inadvertently” overlooked. Yeah, right.

Ernie stays in four- and five-star hotels and flies business or first class. He spent $700 a month on toiletries and dry cleaning and allots himself an annual clothing allowance of $25,000. He also got another $153,344 for miscellaneous expenses, and was paid for a host of other goodies, RRSP contributions, life insurance, long-term income protection, dental, hospital and vision benefits. Ernie spent at least $90,116.58 on food, travel and hotel accommodations over just a three-year period.

In 1996, Eves and his golfing buddy, Mike Harris, after visiting bankers and investors in Paris, Zurich, and London, made a stopover in Edinburgh to play golf at a number of famous golf courses – all on the government dole. (Cam, are you still reading this?)

During an “investor relations trip” in September 1999 to London and Frankfurt, Eves spent almost $4,500 for accommodations, which included the use of the private bar in his room. He also charged booze at Bigliardi’s, a high end Toronto restaurant and the Albany Club, a Toronto Tory hangout, to the taxpayer. (Why couldn’t Cam say that he was just understudying Ernie until he took over his job?)

Ernie didn’t dare run in his old Parry Sound riding when he got the nod to be the Ontario Tory leader and premier early this year. They ran him in the Orangeville area where a Tory candidate, confined permanently to the Kingston Pen, could still beat a Liberal.

The Toronto Star made a Freedom of Information request on Feb. 14. Originally it was decided that The Star “was not entitled to the receipts.” Sources say that the premier’s office went through the documents before they were given to The Star. It was only after seven months of stalling and trying to edit out the damaging information that The Star finally got detailed information.