Meet the man in charge of bringing facts back to politics
If facts still matter in Ontario politics, Peter Weltman is going to have an interesting few years. The province’s new financial accountability officer is the guy who gets to tell MPPs and the public the real story about government spending and programs.
Premier Doug Ford’s commission of inquiry into provincial spending will get the headlines next week, but in the long run it will be Weltman who is charged with identifying any gap between what the government claims and what the numbers actually tell us.
In the dying days of the Wynne Liberal government, that gap became a chasm.
Both the financial accountability officer and the auditor general agree that the Liberals were understating their deficit this year by about $5 billion. The issues are a pension surplus the provincial experts say shouldn’t be included as revenue and the cost of borrowing to cut power bills, which they say should be on the province’s books, not buried elsewhere.
Expect the PCs to accept that analysis.
Ford created a three-person commission, led by former B.C. premier Gordon Campbell, to dig through 15 years of Liberal government bookkeeping, looking for fiscal nefariousness. The commission has access to Liberal cabinet minutes, something the new government itself does not.
Even if the commission doesn’t find anything new, it’s relatively inexpensive and makes for good political theatre.
A band of accountants will conduct what is being billed as a lineby-line review of provincial spending. Let’s hope they aim a little higher. It’s not like they are going to find line items called “waste and inefficiency.”
If they conduct a value-formoney audit of provincial programs, they will have made a useful contribution that will help determine Ford’s first full budget next spring.
Weltman won’t have to wait that long for his first real test. The PCs will deliver a budget update this fall, and Weltman said in an interview that his office will carefully examine that update and compare it to the numbers the Liberals delivered last spring. If there is some wishful thinking, it’s his responsibility to tell us. Weltman will also report on the costs of getting out of cap and trade.
Appointed in May, Weltman seems like just the sort of chap for the job. The former senior official with the Parliamentary Budget Office is analytical, focused on the story the numbers tell and has a good sense of humour.
He’ll need that because the recent record of government listening to its key independent advisers is not encouraging.
The previous government rejected the deficit contentions of both the financial accountability office and the auditor general, dismissing the issue as an accounting dispute. Ford has promised to work with the AG and Weltman’s office. He will need to, or he will quickly have the same credibility deficit as his predecessor.
Weltman has big plans for his office, the profile of which has suffered somewhat from the illness and work absence of his predecessor. He will be doing extensive analysis of the cost drivers and effectiveness of major government programs in social services and education. His office has already broken down health-care costs.
The goal is to demystify government spending, so that legislators and the public can understand what’s really going on.
For example, a recent report showed that public sector compensation is rising sharply after having been under good control between 2010 and 2016, as the Liberals imposed relative austerity. In the last two years, the compensation bill has been increasing at 4.4 per cent a year, driven by higher wages and increased hiring. Kind of an important thing to know, but that analysis had never been provided by the government.
Weltman stresses that his job is not to give policy advice. “Our role is to explain. It’s important to me that we always come across as non-partisan because that’s where our credibility comes from.”
Ontario is fortunate to have a financial accountability office. No other province has such a setup, and it’s no wonder. The last thing any government wants is another killjoy to tell the public it’s having fun with figures.
This office is the most important tool MPPs and the public have when it comes to understanding the big financial picture and the challenges ahead. It’s disappointing that MPPs make so little use of the service Weltman offers. In 2017-18, the office received only nine requests from MPPs and none from committees, although it does a lot of reports on its own initiative.
The previous government too often had us believe that certain things were facts when that clearly wasn’t so. That all contributes to the illusion that there are no facts, just opinions. Weltman is determined to change that. We should all wish him success.
NO OTHER PROVINCE HAS SUCH A SETUP, AND IT’S NO WONDER.
National Post Randall Denley is an Ottawa political commentator and former Ontario PC candidate. Contact him at randalldenley1@gmail.com.