Unconventional Candour by George Smitherman

Author:George Smitherman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dundurn
Published: 2019-05-04T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

What are the lessons here? First of all, arm’s-length agencies can cause trouble for governments because they are free from the usual oversight mechanisms for public spending. They are launched with good intentions as vehicles to get things done at a faster pace than the ponderous machinery of government normally operates. But the salaries they pay and expenses they file and contracts they let often become ingredients for the opposition and the media to cry “scandal.” There is no easier story to tell than one where people apparently take advantage of a situation to enrich themselves or their friends. Does that mean we should never create such agencies? No. They can be essential to progress in the public sector. But governments should always keep in mind the potential for them to backfire.

Secondly, we have a problem with the various bodies that report directly to the Legislature, not the government — the auditor general, ombudsman, privacy commissioner, and so on. They have become sort of a cottage industry, competing with each other for headlines. And the quickest way to a headline is to throw out a number like $1 billion, no matter how far back one has to reach to get there. In both the eHealth and Ornge cases, the auditor general let stand, even if he didn’t utter it in the first place, the notion that $1 billion and $640 million, respectively, were either unaccounted for or simply wasted. This despite the fact that in both cases almost every penny of the allocated money was spent in the intended way, if imperfectly. To say it was all wasted is a gross exaggeration. But that was the impression left by the auditor general. Ironically the very officer paid to provide a sense of value for money to Ontarians ripped them off.

I think governments are partly to blame for this, given their institutional instinct to keep everything confidential even where this is no material risk in its transparent release. That gives power to others who work in secret. I remain convinced that much more value-for-money analysis could come from eagle-eyed researchers and intrepid citizens if they were given greater access to government data. Instead, we have legislative officers duelling for headlines and reverting to tactics like leaking to get them. It is fair to treat their reports with far greater skepticism than before. Of course the media and opposition make much hay in the telling of scandal and anyone being criticized is naively advised if they think it’s all going to come out impartially.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.