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The Doug Ford Progressive Conservatives are currently mired in an expense scandal. And that stench isn’t going away any time soon…

Here’s the skinny: several MPPs who live within a short driving distance from Queen’s Park were staying at ritzy downtown Toronto hotels rather than bothering to commute home. Hey, we get it: nothing beats room service and maid service.

But the thing is, all these MPPs charged these hotel stays to the ever-beleaguered Ontario taxpayer and/or party donors.

One of the worst offenders is Stan Cho, MPP for Willowdale. Cho’s north Toronto residence is just a handful of subway stops away from the legislature, about 12 km in total. And yet even he had the audacity to stay at swank hotels! Why?

Predictably, there has been much blowback. And so it was that Doug Ford – whose polling numbers are currently plummeting – rightfully punished these big spenders.

In the case of Cho, he lost his cabinet position. And he’s been ordered to pay back the more than $13,000 he squandered on hotels.

But Ford himself is certainly not leading by example. The province’s chief cherry cheesecake connoisseur was scrummed on this matter late last month. A journalist asked him if he plans to pay back the $200,000 his aborted private plane purchase cost the Ontario taxpayer. Ford’s answer? When he’s on the road, he eats at McDonald’s. We’re not making this up…

In any event, we paid a visit to Cho’s constituency office as well as a couple of other MPP big spenders – Paul Calandra in Markham and Hardeep Grewal in Brampton. And a trend emerged: all of the constituency offices were in lockdown mode, as if we were still living in the dark days of Covid-19. Either that or nobody would answer the door (it was impossible to see inside these offices, so we had no idea if anybody was home.) The question arises: what is the purpose of maintaining an office in the first place if MPPs and their staffers are not going to be accountable to the people they allegedly serve?

We then visited Mel Lastman Square in Cho’s riding to see what constituents had to say about the various spending sprees on the taxpayer dime. Predictably, they were not amused.

It is all so perversely ironic given that once upon a time Ford ran on the election slogan, “Respect for Taxpayers.”

To quote the late, great Fred Willard: “Hey! Wha’ happened?!”