Critics are once again criticizing the plan of the provincial government to build a luxury spa in the old Ontario Place site, this time about the accusations that the company established the billionaire project that was misrepresented and exaggerated its experience to ensure the agreement.
These statements are part of a story of the New York Times published on Wednesday, which expands the concerns described in the report of a provincial general auditor from the end of last year. The story alleges that Theme had falsely represented as operating more spas in Europe than it really was, along with losing money at the time he was presenting his vision for the main property of Toronto Lakefront.
In Queen’s Park on Wednesday, Liberal MPP John Fraser said the story was “impressive”, since it showed a company with a small spa, one million dollars in capital and an “interconnected network of Shell companies.”
“However, they somehow convinced the prime minister that they had a global history. He not only stretched the truth, led the prime minister along the way of the garden, and the ontarium infrastructure signed immediately,” said Fraser.
“So why was the Premier Greenlight a 95 -year -old treatment with a company that inflated its portfolio and could not pass a basic financial olfate test?”
In a statement sent to CBC News, a Therme spokesman said that the December Auditor’s report said the lease between the company and the province included a financial evidence. The report continues to say that an Ontario Infrastructure (IO) examination of the company’s audited financial statements showed that it had a net assets of $ 100 million.
However, the general auditor’s report also indicates that a main advisor to IO had financial concerns about the company, namely that it had low liquidity and before the end of 2019, the capital value of the group “seemed low”, in less than one million euros.
QUESTIONS ABOUT SPA OPERATIONS
The General Auditor’s report continues to say that “did not carry out the due diligence to ensure that the spa cited by Therme in her submission were property and operated by Thermme Group”.
“We review the six spas and find five instances in which the spa cited in the presentation was not property or operated by Therme Group,” reads the report.
According to the general auditor of the province, the process to select new tenants for Ontario Place was not transparent or fair. Lorenda Reddekopp de CBC Desglosse some of the key findings of the annual report.
In the company’s statement to CBC News, Therme said it currently operates locations in Romania and Germany, that “they welcome more than 3.5 million visitors every year.”
Therme also attributes the discrepancy about the number of spas that operates for a collaboration with the Wund organization, with the architecture, engineering and operations teams behind both companies that play “a central role in the design and construction of the European destinations of Therme.
“After the death of Mr. Wund, this experience was consolidated within the Therme group, where many of the members of the original team have continued working for almost a decade,” says the statement. “This collaboration association was formalized in 2019”.
At an unrelated press conference on Wednesday, Prime Minister Doug Ford said that provincial officials “would analyze” accusations in the history of the New York Times and would ensure that the circumstances surrounding the agreement are legitimate.
“We will investigate it and make sure that everything passes the smell test,” Ford said.
In response to Fraser’s question about the project in Queen’s Park, the Minister of Infrastructure, Kinga Surma, said that therm approved the financial test carried out by the ontarium infrastructure, which called a “world -renowned weapons length agency.”
Pressing in more questions, Surma repeatedly turned to talk about the amount of work that would be created both through construction and the operation of the SPA.
Surma also said that the province “has already done this dance”, when it comes to questioning the project, mentioning audits and a recent review.
The province will not pull the offer
In its last December report, the General Auditor of the Province found that the cost of the Ontario Place re -urbanization had shot for more than $ 1.8 billion, and the process to select new tenants for property was not transparent or fair.
Fraser asked Wednesday if Prime Minister Doug Ford would launch this agreement, as he did when he cut the ties with Starlink by Elon Musk, or when the province moved away from his reurbing plans for the Green Cebel.
“No, we will not,” Surma replied, praising the ontarium infrastructure credentials again.
However, the leader of the Green Party, Mike Schreiner, asked the province to do exactly that, in addition to exploring an “ontary solution” made in Ontario “for space.
“The people of Ontario want to access Ontario Place as a public space, not a privatized space to … a foreign property company that is barely solvent,” he said.
