Financial watchdog an ‘underused’ check on Ontario’s spending
Ontario’s legislators should consider living up to their responsibility to keep an eye on what the premier and her ministers are up to, the province’s financial watchdog advises.
Financial Accountability Officer Stephen LeClair uses just about the mildest possible language for this in his newly released annual report. He is not by nature a bomb-thrower. His tone is respectful. But his criticism should go through the opposition parties and even backbench Liberals like a million volts.
“Do I feel we’re being underused? Yes I do feel we’re being underused,” he says in an interview.
LeClair’s job is to double-check the numbers the government uses in its budgets and forecasts. He’s the provincial equivalent of the federal government’s parliamentary budget officer, a permanent pain in the tuchus to any government that wants to fiddle its figures with unrealistic assumptions or by pretending important details are irrelevant.
He and his small staff calculated, for instance, that the Liberals’ Fair Hydro Plan cuts electricity prices by 25 per cent now by having us spend an extra $21 billion in the future. They laid out some of the risks of Ontario’s cap-andtrade plan for greenhouse gases the government would rather not talk about. They noted how much the government’s budget plans rely on Toronto’s overheated housing market’s spinning in billions in land transfer taxes.
The Liberals never wanted him but the New Democrats forced LeClair’s job into being as a condition of supporting a budget when the Liberals had only a minority and needed propping up. Now they aren’t using him. Mostly LeClair and his staff are coming up with their own ideas about worthwhile things to examine.
“Hallloooooo!” his latest report cries out. “I’m over here! Let me know if you need anything!”
LeClair has been a senior official in multiple ministries in the federal government and in the Northwest Territories, Alberta and Yukon (where he was deputy minister of finance). He’s seen how different systems work.
“I am looking for ways in which we can contribute more to (provincial) parliament. From my past jobs, I know that committees can be an effective way. But I know that the committees here sometimes don’t have the kind of dialogue that can bring up the big issues,” he says. “What we often see is different people bringing forward their views on a subject rather than having ministers and public servants explaining the rationales for what they’ve done.”
The opposition parties’ most effective attacks on the Liberals — on any government — come from access-to-information requests and leaked documents and auditors’ reports and court filings in formal investigations, not rhetorical venting. Generating that raw material is hard, grinding work, but there’s a squad of experts ready to assist.
In the last year, LeClair’s received four inquiries from MPPs, a pitifully low number. He’s received precisely zero from any committees of the legislature.
“The FAO would be pleased to appear before a committee to discuss a potential research request,” LeClair’s report says.
Maybe the legislature’s finance committee could call in the finance minister to talk about implementing his budget, he suggests. The House of Commons does this and it seems to help MPs understand what’s going on.
Other subject-matter committees (on, say, justice policy) spend much of their time scrutinizing bills passing through the legislature, which is an important part of their job. But only part.
“These policy field committees rarely undertake general studies of the ministries that fall under their mandate,” LeClair says, even the multibillion-dollar ones like health and education. Also, maybe the legislature could adopt the practice of having the subject-matter committees study their ministries’ spending instead of having one generalpurpose committee do it.
If they did, perhaps they’d come up with questions about how those ministries spend their piles of public money.
All MPPs who aren’t in cabinet are supposed to monitor and challenge the premier and cabinet on how they govern and spend. That is their constitutional responsibility.
“These heavy tasks fall on the shoulders of backbench MPPs, both in the government and opposition parties. They face competing demands on their time, often lack access to useful information about economic and financial matters and historically had limited economic and financial analytical support,” LeClair writes. “The FAO looks forward to working with MPPs to better understand how to support their scrutiny function.”
A pause, a deep breath. “Hallooooo! Again! Let me know if I can help you do your jobs! If you feel like doing them, I mean!”
In the next election, Ontario’s count of MPPs goes from 107 to 122, which will likely mean more backbench MPPs. Maybe that’ll include more maverick government backbenchers, whatever party wins. It should certainly include more effective opposition legislators ready to use this powerful tool that’s just lying there ready to be picked up.