Province misfires on ServiceOntario
It’s not difficult to identify a common denominator in the serial policy controversies of the Ontario government.
The halving of Toronto city council. Ontario Place. The Ontario Science Centre. Municipal boundary changes. The off-again, onagain, off-again development of the Greenbelt.
These initiatives and more have been characterized by lack of public consultation, lack of transparency, and the whiff of backroom decision-making to which certain interests are privy while the public is not.
One would have thought that after the epic recent reversals of the Greenbelt scandal — a career and credibility eroding mess still being investigated by the RCMP — that Premier Doug Ford would have wanted to bend over backwards, for at least a time, in the name of demonstrating fair process and inviting public involvement. There was an opportunity to show that hard lessons in governing had been learned and lasting changes made.
But no. Here we are again with the moving of some ServiceOntario outlets into the Staples chain of office supply stores.
Opposition critics are justifiably concerned, given the government’s track record, about the inexplicable absence of a competitive bidding process. “There’s a lack of transparency, decisions are being made behind closed doors all the time and they’re always looking to reward the big corporations,” New Democrat MPP Tom Rakocevic (Humber River-Black Creek) told the Toronto Star.
Now, the initiative might be every bit as innocent as Business Services Delivery Minister Todd McCarthy described it.
McCarthy says the move, with six Service Ontario centres to open in Staples locations on Thursday, is part of a three-year pilot project that will save about $1 million and help determine what arrangements work best.
New outlets in Staples will be open 30 per cent longer than the locations they are replacing, he said, and the province has been using retail partners such as Canadian Tire, IDA and Home Hardware for Service Ontario locations for years.
But who’s to know?
The Liberals have asked Ontario’s Financial Accountability Office for an analysis into the costs of retrofits in Staples centres — to be paid for by the province — and also whether unionized public service jobs might be lost. Liberal MPP Stephanie Bowman (Don Valley West) said the contracts will provide significant value to large American companies with Ontario paying for renovations and delivering increased foot traffic into their outlets.
The Star’s Rob Ferguson reported that there was no competitive bidding because some existing Service Ontario agreements with the private contractors that run them were expiring soon and the government wanted to avoid service gaps.
But with the Ford government, there is always an excuse for haste. And the record shows that government haste has too often resulted in reversals that end up costing the public plenty.
The Ford administration’s modus operandi — first a policy announcement, then at some unspecified future date the business case, as happened with the plan to move the Ontario Science Centre — is too often the opposite of what most Ontarians would likely deem sensible and prudent.
The fact that this government can generate controversy in its handling of so comparatively minor a matter is concerning.
And McCarthy’s hapless effort this week to explain the matter to reporters — especially on where savings will be found and why the sole-source contracts were necessary — hardly provided reassurance. The trouble for McCarthy and for Ford is that critics — and a good many ordinary Ontarians — are disinclined to give them the benefit of the doubt for the simple reason that the government, as its track record makes clear, hasn’t earned it.
The benefit of trust will be won back — assuming, after the Greenbelt fiasco, that matters aren’t already too far gone — through durable evidence that lessons have been learned and changes in procedure made.
That means slowing down when necessary, adopting competitive bidding processes as a matter of course, and letting the public in early and often on decisions. No more surprise policy reveals with little evidence to support the looming changes.
It doesn’t seem that big an expectation or too difficult a task.