Ontario focusing province-wide school board audits on frivolous trip spending [Video]

The Ford government is shifting the focus of bi-annual audits it plans to impose on school boards across the province to include a specific look at the discretionary spending of senior figures like trustees after a number of controversial trips raised the ire of the premier.

For weeks, school boards have been under intense scrutiny for charging the costs of overseas trips and an excursion to a Toronto Blue Jays to taxpayers.

In the Brantford area, trustees expensed $45,000 on a trip to Italy where they spent roughly $100,000 on artwork. A London, Ont., school board spent roughly $40,000 on a retreat to the Blue Jays stadium hotel and another southwestern Ontario board spent $32,00, according to CBC, sending three staff to a conference in Hawaii.

“I was as shocked as you are, being a new minister of education and this landing on my desk week after week,” Education Minister Jill Dunlop told Alex Pearson on AM 640,which …