As Premier Kathleen Wynne and NDP Leader Andrea Horwath publicly squabble about the 2013 Ontario budget, yet another of the Liberal government’s many scandals continues to quietly unfold — Ornge.

Clearly, the province’s embattled air ambulance service (which has received over $700 million of taxpayers’ money since 2006), currently under a criminal investigation by the OPP, has some more explaining to do.

Last week, at the legislative committee digging into the actions of former Ornge executives and board directors, another doozy was revealed to taxpayers.

Almost 94% of the money funneling through the labyrinth of for-profit shell companies created by disgraced former Ornge CEO, Chris Mazza, came from taxpayers.

Allen Tait, head of the government’s forensic audit team, testified the auditors were unable to “identify a regular source of revenue that was not ministry-related.”

In other words, these so-called for-profit companies weren’t making any profits.

Tait, whose audit team has completed a report now in the hands of the OPP, also looked at three questionable loans Mazza received and the corporate structure of the 20 shell companies.

Mazza was given $1.2 million as an advance on his bonus, a loan for his home and a third loan for an undisclosed reason.

The auditor told the committee the documentation on who approved these loans, and when they did it, was “inconsistent.”

Regarding the shell companies, Tait’s team found pretty much the same people on the various boards of the Ornge “conglomerate.”

Last year, former Ontario auditor general Jim McCarter released a scathing report on Ornge, including a picture graph illustrating the tangled web of shell companies.

The graph, complete with arrows and dotted lines, explained which companies did or did not have decision-making power, which entities were the beneficiary of others and which entities owned what. It was all very dizzying.

Here are just some of the companies created — J Smarts, Ornge Global Real Estate Inc., Ornge Issuer Trust, Ornge Global Corporate Services, Ornge U.S. Inc., Ornge Global Management Inc., Orngeco.

You get the point. Quite a lengthy and confusing list, considering Ornge has been around for less than 10 years.

Each of these shell companies had a purpose.

McCarter’s report found one of the “for-profits” purchased a building for $15 million, then leased it to Ornge for “40% higher than fair market rent.”

Another was Ornge Peel, now Ornge Global. This was one of the first entities created. Its purpose was to cover the exorbitant salaries of Ornge executives and then “deliver professional services back to Ornge.” In doing so, they did not have to reveal salaries on the annual Sunshine List.

This is how Ornge was able to mask the astronomical $1.4 million annual salary Mazza was receiving, courtesy of Ontario taxpayers.

And let’s not forget Mazza’s champagne tastes — executive-class trips to Rio, New York and Milan, $6,000 spent at Rio’s Copacabana, $850 per night hotel rooms, $237,000 in credit card expenses.

Progressive Conservative MPP Frank Klees, who has been focused like a laser for the past two years on this debacle, has been rightly outraged at the lack of accountability at the health ministry, where no one is taking responsibility for this mess.

Klees told me he’s troubled none of the former directors brought before the committee to testify “admitted they knew anything was untoward.”

If you comb through the witness testimony, some inconsistencies are obvious.

For example, former Liberal Party of Canada president Alfred Apps, who helped Mazza set up the shell companies, testified he didn’t lobby the government.

But Ontario Integrity Commissioner Lynn Morrison found Apps had conducted unregistered lobbying.

Apps, with the law firm Fasken Martineau at the time he was providing legal counsel to Ornge, has since resigned.

Between 2003 and 2012, Fasken’s billed Ornge for 22,000 hours of work, totaling nearly $11 million, according to The Canadian Press.

Beyond the financial questions surrounding Ornge — and the inability of Health Minister Deb Matthews and her staff to get a grip on them as it was spiraling out of control — there is an even more important issue.

Ornge wasn’t just any company. It was charged with the vital task of providing air ambulance services to patients who were often critically ill, or badly injured, under emergency conditions.

The fact the Liberals allowed things to get so out of hand at Ornge doesn’t just raise questions about their ability to handle our money. After all, that’s nothing new.

Rather, it raises doubts about the Liberals’ ability to run the health care system competently.

And what could be scarier than that?