A plan to give free 72-hour emergency survival kits to some of Ontario’s highest-paid civil servants at taxpayer expense has been quashed by Community Safety Minister Rick Bartolucci.
The move came after the Toronto Star obtained an internal government document on the plan, part of emergency preparedness week and “especially timely given the current H1N1 flu virus,” said the memo, which also cited recent emergencies such as last summer’s propane explosion in North York.
“We are not impressed,” said Laura Blondeau, a spokesperson for Bartolucci.
The kits from the government agency Emergency Management Ontario were to go to deputy ministers of each government department, more than two dozen in all, who sit on the deputy ministers’ council.
