WYNNE ALWAYS TRYING TO MUZZLE FISCAL WATCHDOGS

ROUTINELY LAMBASTED FOR ITS incompetent handling of government finances and, more generally, the province’s economy, the Wynne Liberals can add evasive to a list of traits that includes shifty and underhanded.

Stymied at all turns in his efforts to review the economic and financial impact of the government’s policies, Ontario’s Financial Accountability Officer took the unusual step this week of calling out Wynne and company for actively preventing him from doing his job.

Stephen LeClair, in the job for a little more than a year, called a media conference Tuesday to decry the lack of cooperation from provincial ministries as he attempts to double-check the Liberals’ budget figures.

“It is highly disappointing that instead of looking to maximize the information that the government can provide to MPPs and through them all Ontarians, the government is focusing on how it can restrict disclosure of information. In doing so, they are impeding the ability of MPPs to perform their constitutional duties of holding the government to account,” he said in a statement.

In this regard, Wynne is very much like former prime minister Stephen Harper: Mouthing platitudes about accountability, but doing everything possible to avoid it. Like Harper, she is continually at odds with those charged with overseeing the government and protecting the public interest, including the likes of the Auditor General.

Not surprisingly, the creation of Financial Accountability Office – a position analogous to the federal Parliamentary Budget Office, so often the target of Harper’s opprobrium – was resisted by Wynne. Won as a concession for NDP support during a minority government situation in 2013, the position would take two years to fill as the government dragged its feet. A government with much to hide has no interest in someone who’ll be digging around to find all of its misdeeds, misdemeanours and felonies.

Bureaucrats in a wide range of ministries are using a host of excuses to avoid complying with the FAO’s requests for information, quite often citing an exception for cabinet records. That’s due to a decidedly liberal interpretation of the legislation that created his office, LeClair argues.

“This overly broad interpretation of the cabinet records exception makes it difficult for me to assess the plausibility of the government’s financial projections and to evaluate risks that might mean that those projections would not be met. I believe that such analysis is at the core of the mandate that I have been given as an officer of the Assembly.”

Clearly, attempts to block his progress are systemic. That flies in the face of Wynne’s claim to open and accountable government. (Sound familiar?) Even given the government’s attempts to stem the flow of information, Ontarians have come to expect financial incompetence and malfeasance. Giving the watchdogs the free hand the law requires will undoubtedly reveal yet more mismanagement and corruption, precisely what Wynne is attempting to keep from us.

Having been exposed selling access to the highest bidders, Wynne has promised to reform election finance laws. No one believes real change will come, and with her muzzling of the overseers she has every intent of keeping Ontarians in the dark.