Other stories to watch
MPP Dave Smith responds to fact check
Peterborough-Kawartha MPP Dave Smith has responded to Peterborough Currents' fact-checking of his comments regarding the Peterborough budget.
During a speech in the provincial legislature last month, Smith claimed that the operating budgets of Kingston and Brantford are equal to or smaller than Peterborough's, despite those cities having larger populations than Peterborough.
In an analysis I published on the Currents website last week, I noted that publicly available budget documents do not support those claims. I also noted that Smith misstated Peterborough's proposed 2025 operating budget by tens of millions of dollars during the speech.
Before and after I published the article, I repeatedly asked Smith to clarify his claims regarding the Peterborough budget and share where his numbers were coming from.
Smith responded by text message on Friday to say that my column was “flawed." He wrote that the column confused “the total municipal budget with the operating and capital budgets,” but he didn’t explain this assertion when asked to. My column noted that Peterborough’s 2025 operating budget proposes $411 million in gross spending. The city’s capital budget is separate and is not included in that amount.
“Your lack of understanding of the budget process renders the rest of your article skewed and flawed,” Smith wrote.
As we always do when someone raises a concern about our work, we reviewed the published article in light of Smith's response. We stand by the reporting and analysis presented in the article and do not believe any corrections need to be made to it.
Smith has yet to provide any evidence for the claims he has made regarding Kingston's, Brantford's, or Peterborough's budgets. While I have asked him repeatedly where he got the numbers he cited, he has not provided an answer. In a text message exchange, he said he is too busy to have a phone conversation.
|
