TORONTO

This Liberal incumbent was chief administrative officer at the scandal-plagued Toronto Community Housing Corporation (TCHC) for two years from 2009 to 2011 but she doesn’t even mention that on her re-election website.

In fact, Mitzie Hunter was rather vague about her role at TCHC during and after auditor general Jeff Griffths’ shocking report on spending abuses came to light when I questioned her about it during last summer’s byelection in the riding of Scarborough-Guildwood.

She beat a hasty exit from TCHC in December of 2011 to take up the job of CEO of the Civic Action Alliance (headed by John Tory) — a job she does note on her re-election website. She also contended last summer that the period reviewed by Griffiths did not cover the time she was at TCHC.

However Griffiths also told me last summer that even though his audit period was before Hunter’s time, the problems and issues related to employee expenses continued well beyond that.

And that appears to be true.

According to a record of expenses charged by Hunter to her P (Purchasing) card during her two years at TCHC, obtained by the Toronto Sun, she indulged her taste for lavish lunches at four-star restaurants and a desire to hob-nob with the professional elite at conferences that appear to have absolutely noting to do with the mandate of social housing and everything to do with promoting Mitzie Hunter.

The Ontario Ministry of Finance Sunshine List shows Hunter made $178,000 in salary and benefits as TCHC’s CAO in 2011.

Repeated efforts to reach Hunter Wednesday for comment were unsuccessful. Her handler, Christina Rettig, who worked for Dalton McGuinty’s government and was an active member of the team that got Kathleen Wynne appointed Premier, thanked me for “reaching out” but insisted Hunter was “unavailable.” When I pointed out that there were some pretty damning expenses requiring explanation, Rettig e-mailed me back indicating Hunter was only commenting on Ben Zycher, the U.S. economist who’d reviewed the Tory economic platform, and who apparently has commented that Michelle Obama is a lightweight.

That notwithstanding, according to her PCard report for 2010, Hunter was barely on the job four months before she took off to Ottawa in March of 2010 to attend the 150 Canada Conference, a two-day meeting with artists, social innovators, public servants. While there, she racked up a $357.56 bill at the 4.5-star Fairmont Chateau Laurier hotel and a $50 meal at the Byward Market fusion restaurant Sante.

She was barely back in Toronto when she dined two days in a row with guests at the trendy Rosedale Bistro, Avant Gout. The first lunch, costing taxpayers $62.95, was on March 17 with Alina Chatterjee, the former acting director of the Community Health Unit at TCHC. The next day Hunter ate with Judy Fantham, the TCHC’s director of organizational development. That lunch cost $52.22.

Within two months, Hunter was off to Oakland, Calif., on May 13, listing the expense as the Ontario Non-Profit Housing Association conference. The conference that year was actually held in Toronto in November, so it remains a mystery what she was doing there. While there, she billed a $554.77 stay at the Marriott in Oakland City, a $147.98 dinner at Johnny Foley’s Irish pub in San Francisco’s Union Square for herself, deposed CEO Keiko Nakamura, Michelle Wong (who at the time was the TCHC’s director of compliance and ethics) and an unnamed guest.

After a few more lavish lunches — one for $51.76 at Wish restaurant on Charles and two on the same June day at both Patisserie Patachou and Le Pain Quotidien — Hunter jetted off to Montreal in October of that year for the three-day International Women’s Forum conference. The IWF, according to its website, “advances leadership across careers, cultures and continents by connecting the world’s most pre-eminent women of significant and diverse achievement.”

Hunter charged her $686.29 bill at the Starwood Sheraton Montreal and $832.89 for air tickets on both Air Canada and Porter Air to taxpayers, among other things, as well as $587.50 in membership fees to IWF for part of 2010 and 2011.

The Liberal MPP thought of everything, it seems. In October of 2009, she billed Canada’s largest social housing provider for $624.75 in legal fees to settle her employment contract and the next August for $791.00 in repairs to her damaged car. She also ordered $161.00 worth of Toronto Sun reprints of two Don Peat stories about the board’s move to sell 706 scattered homes.

NDP campaign co-chair Gilles Bisson told the Toronto Sun people are “tired” of seeing their hard-earned dollars “wasted by out-of-touch-Liberals” like this. “That is why the NDP want to end the waste and scandal, and are running to clean up the government in the upcoming provincial election,” he said.

Efforts to reach Hunter’s PC opponent, Ken Kirupa, were unsuccessful.