Myrtle Jenkins Smith, almost at her first million

Liberal party organizer and business person Myrtle Jenkins Smith is on her way to her first $1 million dollars in the Liberal Millionaires Club. CBC Compass reported today that the Province of PEI forgave OUTSIDE MUSIC FESTIVAL INC.the $300,000 loan for the Alanis Morissette music concert.

Smith, a partner in Outside Music with Mark Carr-Rollitt, has been the recipient of Liberal Government patronage of more than $500,000 since the election prior to the Morissette show. This puts her tally now at $800,000.

The patronage wasted on Smith and others in the Liberal Millionaires Club is a barrier to reform of the PEI Disability Support Program.

This is so obviously patronage. Try imagining if your summer business went flop. Would Tourism Minister Valerie Docherty bail you out for $300,000?

Not unless you were fellow high placed Liberals and friends. You couldn’t get the $300,000 in the first place without something approaching Smith’s connections.
Disability Reform Process

Smith was the contractor working to slow down the Disability Reform process by taking the wheels off the train before it left the station. Smith obstructed the committee behind the scenes. She organized the ridiculous but cunning night time, public meetings in the winter. Smith was the ever-willing paid consultant to keep the committee off-balance.

The Premier’s office can laddle out tens of millions of dollars to big business based on phone calls and business lunches. Ghiz is as slow as molasses running up hill in February when it comes to progress of promised social reforms. Paid agents like Smith control endless studies and commissions that drone on for months then years without results. Ghiz hopes that by the time all the reports are he will have won his next election without any substantial improvements in the social delivery systems.

The patronage wasted on Smith and others in the Liberal Millionaires Club is a barrier to reform of the PEI Disability Support Program. Smith’s negative effect on the disabled of PEI is like a virus infecting more than anyone could imagine.

Smith was a high placed election campaign worker for Health and Social Services and Seniors Minister Doug Currie. Currie and Docherty have been awarding lucrative contracts without tender to Smith ever since.

We have been tracking Smith’s patronage wins on this site, on the sister site Liberal Millionaires Club and on YouTube.

Let’s not be naive. Governments award patronage to their friends. Smith is just another friend of the government; however she is “ever ready” to block progress for people with disabilities, which is our concern. The disabled are her pet project or prey.

Double Agent against the disabled

We worked with her on the Disability Services Review Committee, the Liberals promised key to improving services to the disabled. Smith put a monkey wrench in the works at every turn, along with the then director Kathy Jones.

We believe Smith to be almost a double agent. On the one hand she espouses support for the disabled but on the other her impact is usually negative.

For example, she arranged the freak show for the disabled this summer at Old Home Week. While her group the PEI CPA approved the event, many in the disability community including the PEI Council of Persons with Disabilities recognized the event as inappropriate. See the thread starting at We are not freaks .

Smith is also on the Canada Games 2009 committee which we believe to be one of the factors behind the removal of accessible parking at UPEI. See Only a pawn in their game and subsequent articles.

We are opposed to people like Smith who are not disabled representing us. At best they lack have empathy for our situation: at worst they are all too willing to profit on their association with the disabled. We made this point to government several times but it appears to fall on deaf ears. Of course, people like Smith are effective at keeping social change to a minimum.

Just imagine for a minute the howl of protests if the PEI Advisory Council on the Status of Women was controlled by men. It just wouldn’t happen.

Why is Smith living off our problems?

There is some hope if she gets rich soon, she’ll go away and the government will be ready to reform the services Islanders with disabilities need. It’s called faint hope.

Editor’s Note:

We have no personal axe to grind with Myrtle Jenkins Smith and hope she achieves all the personal and financial success she seeks. However, she is acting as an agent resisting reform of the disability support program and other disability programs which brings her into our backyard. He departure from the disability world should be a boon for all except her fans.

We expect the further howls of protest from Smith through her executive at the PEI-CPA. The last time this story came up, they ran three attack in the letters to the editor.