James Wallace
Tuesday, July 03, 2007 -
Queens Park - By James Wallace
The Sarnia Observer
Dalton McGuinty may have earned himself a new nickname – “Puff” Daddy.
There is a troubling and growing gap, the province’s Ombudsman charged in his annual report, between what Ontario’s government promises to do and what it delivers.
“It has not escaped the people of Ontario that strongest leadership shown by many key government bureaucracies has been in making puffed-up promises,” Ombudsman Andre Marin said at a Queen’s Park press conference.
“I’m referring to what has become an all-too familiar and rampant refrain among government organizations,” Marin said.
When confronted with criticisms, failings or “shabby and incompetent” actions, government ministries, agencies, boards and commissions routinely respond with attempts to “sideline the issue” or proclaim themselves “world class,” an “international leader” or otherwise engage in self-serving hyperbole.
There is a cost to such bureaucratic hype and “spin-doctoring,” the Ombudsman maintained.
“If government and their agencies believe they can hustle the public, they will be tempted to leave their programs under-resourced and flawed, crossing their fingers that no one will pull back their Wizard-of-Oz curtain and expose the real state of affairs,” Marin said.
That was the case, the Ombudsman found in reviews over the past year, at the province’s Municipal Property Assessment System, which boasted it was a “global leader in property assessment” but actually was “a cutthroat agency with little regard for homeowners.”
The province’s Family Responsibility Office “raved” it was a “national leader in enforcing family support payments” but in fact was “an organization marked by carelessness and a lackadaisical attitude” and one that is effectively “mollycoddling deadbeat parents,” the Ombudsman found.
Similar “delusions” were evident at the Ontario Lottery Corporation, where the Ombudsman revealed the corporation turned a blind eye to insider wins and retailers who cheated ticket-holders out of prize money and at The Criminal Injuries Compensation Board, which forced crime victims it was created to serve to wait three years for recompense and prolonged their pain and suffering by forcing them through a “grueling bureaucratic maze” to get their due.
Marin said he was tempted to title his annual report “The Year of Overpromising and Underdelivering.”
Ontarians are among the most highly-taxed citizens on the planet and it’s been abundantly clear for a considerable time that we do not get good value for the tax dollars taken from our pockets.
Marin suggests the bureaucracy’s credibility is “dying a slow death” and “creating legions of disillusioned citizens.”
It is addicted to “rulitis,” “policy paralysis” and “customer disservice,” the Ombudsman said and again, suggests consequences.
“When there is a gulf between promise and delivery, public trust is squandered,” Marin said.
“Puffery is antithetical to open and transparent government, corrosive of public trust and harmful to meaningful democracy,” he said.
“It is therefore serious business when government agencies make promises they cannot or will not keep, or attempt to paper over their failings with ostentatious claims.”
In his report, Marin documents examples of “the perils of puffery.”
“Citizens go to their government when they are in need, and often when they are at their most vulnerable,” he says in his report.
Marin also reiterated a complaint he’s made before, that there is poor, even appalling oversight and accountability for the billions upon billions of dollars of taxpayer dollars transferred from the province to municipalities, school boards, police services, children’s aid societies, hospitals, universities and nursing homes.
The Ombudsman received 2,400 complaints from transfer agencies last year, ranging from complaints that children in foster care were sexually abused (and in two cases that children died in foster care) to shocking failings in the health care sector and allegations of elder abuse in nursing homes.
Unlike other provinces, Ontario’s transfer payment partners of government generally lack independent, unbiased, credible and effective watchdogs to protect the public.
Marin, repeating a call he made earlier this year, asked the province to expand his powers to investigate these publicly funded agencies.
Both NDP leader Howard Hampton and Conservative leader John Tory support such oversight.
“I’ve been saying for some time now this is a government founded on a lot of big claims and photo opportunities and not on results,” Tory said in commenting on Marin’s report.
To be fair, the self-serving culture within government cannot be laid entirely at the feet of Ontario’s current Liberal government or it’s Premier.
However, nothing is likely to change unless voters, in the lead up to the Oct. 10 provincial election this fall, squawk.
All three parties need to clearly articulate how they plan to make government more effective and accountable.
If they fail to do so, any other campaign promises they make will indeed amount to puffery.