Canoe

Tuesday, November 21, 2000

Ont. Auditor slams $1 billion transfer By JAMES STEVENSON-- The Canadian Press

RELATED STORY: Prison overhaul not backed by sound plan: Ont. auditor

TORONTO (CP) -- A bungled attempt to transfer property records onto computers that could cost Ontario more than $1 billion tops the list of government mismanagement contained in this year's provincial auditor's report.

Updating Ontario's Land Registration System was supposed to cost $275 million and be finished last year, but it could now cost another $700 million and ten more years, auditor Erik Peters wrote in his report, released Tuesday.

The 300-page report heaped stinging criticism onto many government departments, especially over handling of hot-button issues like emergency medical services, law and order and the environment.

Although Ontario's Environment Ministry has issued more than 220,000 approval documents since 1957, its records were unable to tell whether companies were meeting standards, the report said.

"As a result, the ministry did not know the extent to which facilities were not meeting current environmental standards, and consequently, where corrective action had been taken," Peters wrote.

And the department failed to collect at least $90 million from companies, as required by law, to clean up any potential environmental damage.

Staff cutbacks of 25 per cent in the past four years have led to a 34 per cent decrease in ministry inspections, leading the auditor to infer that the government "usually learned of contaminated sites only after serious harm to the environment had occurred."

Peters' audit was completed before May, when Ontario's environmental record came under intense scrutiny. That's when contaminated drinking water in the farming town of Walkerton, Ont., killed seven people and sickened thousands of others.

Since then, the province has been grappling with tighter laws and regulations for everything from water systems to pollution, saying the department is in the midst of a reorganization.

The report also lambasted Ontario's Ministry of Correctional services, saying there was no comprehensive business case to defend its decision to build two new superjails in Lindsay and Penetanguishene -- at least one of which is to be operated by a private company.

And AgriCorp, a Crown corporation which administers crop insurance, was cited for losing $325,000 in a botched day-trading project last year.

The auditor also drew attention to AgriCorp's decision to hire computer consultants for up to 13 years at a cost of $640 per day. He also said employee hospitality expenses were "over-generous and too frequent."

Ontario's beleaguered health-care system was also examined, with several surprising conclusions.

Although the province is proceeding with downloading ambulance services to municipalities, a full half of ambulances fail to meet established response times.

And 36 per cent of the time that hospitals request ambulance redirect or critical care bypass, their emergency departments were not at full capicity, the auditor reported.

The issue of turning ambulances away from hospitals was at the heart of a recently completed inquest into the death of 18-year-old Joshua Fleuelling.

The Toronto-area teen suffered a massive asthma attack and then had to ride in an ambulance for 18 critical minutes while drivers tried to find a hospital with an available bed. His parents disconnected his life-support system the next day.

During 1999, Peters said, one region reported 1,900 instances where patients in life-threatening or serious condition waited in ambulances for up to 45 minutes before the hospitals accepted them.

The report also targeted the province's spending on small items, referred to as "moveable assets."

It spent more than $500 million on everything from TV's and VCR's to computers and printers in the fiscal year of 1998-1999, but didn't keep proper records and doesn't know exactly what it has on hand.

-- Rachel Gibson (rgibson@hotmail.com), November 22, 2000