“You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.” Abraham Lincoln Premier Dalton McGuinty should keep that in mind. For McGuinty, rather than face up to a myriad of difficulties under his direct watch, has discovered a convenient way to avoid taking responsibility for his actions.

He’s buying piece of mind for himself and his party with your tax dollars.

Like the old adage about one law for the rich and another for the poor, McGuinty has tapped into the province’s apparently bottomless pit in order to save himself the inconvenience and embarrassment of looking in the mirror.

In the last year alone, the Ontario Liberals have used the public purse in five - count ‘em, five - high-profile court settlements, all the better to stop the public from learning the nasty details and saving himself and his party from the political fallout which true exposure would bring.

How convenient. And disgusting.

Take the case of Kelly McDougald, the chief executive officer of the troubled Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp., who was fired “with cause” - “to ensure protection of taxpayers’ money” according to Finance Minister Dwight Duncan.

But when McDougald, with considerable cause, claimed she was scapegoated by the Liberals for political reasons, she sued. Duncan promised a “vigorous” defence, only to turn around and cut McDougald a cheque for $747,925 - announced in a brief news release on Christmas Eve. That’s right, Christmas Eve. No explanation then or since. How cynical is that?

No more cynical, alas, that the settlement reached over the Christmas season with Dave Brown and Dana Shatwell, the Caledonia couple who were terrorized by native protests, made to exist in a living hell while the government and the OPP looked the other way, and finally decided to go to court with a $7 million lawsuit.

The Liberals - who earlier tried to buy their way out of this mess by turning land and money over to the native protesters- had not only turned their backs on this couple, and on all the non-native population of Caledonia, but when the case did come to court they used the full power of the Crown office to attempt to destroy the couple’s characters.

But then, realizing that is was the government that was looking bad - and not the couple who’d clearly been victimized by the whole mess - the Liberals, once again, went into the public piggy bank and cut a cheque for an undisclosed amount, hoping the whole thing will go away and we’ll never know for certain just how badly they handled this situation.

Again, how convenient, eh?

Oh yes, Kelly McDougald wasn’t the only Lottery executive who got a big settlement at public expense. Earlier when CEO Duncan Brown was fired after news of an insider win controversy made the Liberals scramble, they dispatched a $720,000 severance package to make sure all the details of the situation would not become public.

Then there is $320,000 package sent along to Sarah Kramer after her resignation as chief executive of e- Health Ontario - a billion-dollar Liberal boondoggle - after spending just seven months on the job. Don’t you wish you could get a job like that? And why not, you’re paying for it all out of your tax dollars.

But how about former Hydro One president Tom Parkinson. He resigned in the wake of an expense account controversy - even though the available evidence showed he was being victimized here - but rather than have the details revealed to the public - who, after all, are expected by the Liberals to simply pay and keep their mouths shut - then Energy Minister Dwight Duncan approved a $3-million severance payment for Parkinson.

According to Duncan, that was in “the best interest” of Ontario taxpayers. Nonsense. The only interest the Liberals care about is their own partisan interest. And you, dear heart, get to pick up the tab once again.

Finally, after the province spent about $600,000 pursuing Police Act charges against two senior OPP officers, and on the eve of Commissioner Julian Fantino’s court appearance for cross examination on whether the officers were victims of a political prosecution or not, the Liberals - surprise, surprise - decided that hey, we’ve got the cash, why not just buy our way out of this one too? Which is what they did and, again, details of the settlement are none of your business. You just get to pay. No need for you to know how much now, is there?

And so it goes.

Rather than facing up to their responsibility, McGuinty and Company have decided to evade it - at your expense - in the hopes that keeping information from you will protect their political skins.

Maybe it will. Maybe it won’t. We’ll have to wait and see.