Ontario's Caplan Resigns Before Release of e-Health Report

Maybe Navigator?

Caplan may not be the last to walk the plank. The upcoming auditor general's report will reveal that the most egregious e-health spending offences happened during the ministerial tenure of one George Smitherman.  Be interesting to see how that affects furious George's position in cabinet as well as his Toronto mayoral hopes. John Tory will likely be reading the auditor's report with great interest and a large blue highlighter.

That's billion with a "b", folks.

Infuriating.

Either that, or Caplan could follow John Tory's steps and more as a media commentator

"Bill Gates, America's richest man with a net worth of $50 billion, has a personal balance sheet larger than the gross domestic product (GDP) of 140 countries, including Costa Rica, El Salvador, Bolivia and Uruguay. The Microsoft (MSFT - news - people ) visionary's nest egg is just short of the GDP of Tanzania and Burma."

http://www.forbes.com/2009/09/29/forbes-400-gates-dell-walton-charney-ri...

And the Ministry of Health has had nearly that much money every year for the last ten years. 

On the main point (now a blog post), Ontario has always been addicted to consultants - particularly IT consultants. We've seen it for more than 20 years under the NDP, the conservatives (remember Andersen anyone) and the liberals. Whether tendered or un-tendered, contracting out of IT services has often been a waste of taxpayer money with favoritism, cost overruns, blown timelines, shoddy work that costs more money to fix, lack of accountability, lack of knowledge transfer to permanent staff leading to ongoing dependency on consultants, risk to privacy of personal information and potential of corruption.

This is not primarily about the tendering process as (wannabe mayor co-incidentally talk show host) John Tory, the conservatives and media would have us believe. I hope the ONDP can distinguish itself from the conservatives on this issue. Let's not let them change the channel on the central issue - public services, contracting out and the unwillingness of the provincial government to develop its own capacity to deliver in-house projects of various sizes. Relying on consultants gets the FTE (full-time, permanent job) costs down while contract spending continues to soar. It's the old "two-pocket" trick. 

Critics on the right who are squawking about E-health consultant fees who don't deliver were also squawking about overpaid trash collectors and other municipal workers who do deliver. They want to have their cake and eat it too. Maybe they can try sending the work to India or China next and see how quickly that moves the project ahead.

We can't have accountability with a contingent labour force. The only realistic long-term solution is to rebuild the civil service and to develop internal IT capacity. 

p.s. - It's not just the Ministry of Health but also Ministry of Government Services, Ministry of Finance and ultimately the Premier's office which share responsibility for this latest debacle. 

This is what happens when voters hand Pinocchio's party a phony-baloney 22 percent dictatorship. Liberals and their private enterprise friends think it's a free for all.

Thank you, Polunatic2.

To make the size of the theft more clear, I have used different examples of wealth. If you have something better for comparison purposes, please give us your examples. 

I think that ALL Ontario's politicians are responsible for this. The NDP failed to respond when I delivered this information to their HQ months ago.

(Update: Calls to NDP HQ, Horvath's offices, Kormos's offices and to LHIN offices were blown off. I've been mining this thread for months.).

Nonsense on all the the provinces politicians being at fault.

I am not sure the ONDP is faultless in all this-- unless Harris or McGinty abolished ONDP legislation under the Rae government that would have had this come to light sooner.  

Which is a distinct possibility.

However, there's only one way for this to come out right in the end, and that's for it to be seen as the LEGISLATURE being derelect in it's duty.

The Conservatives will spin this as "government can't do anything right", and push for privatization as an alternative-- even if you and I see the glaring stupidity in the argument, in that it is very much the business world that has acted to steal this money.

Selling it as "Liberal Corruption" is tempting, particularly to Conservatives, and it's fun potential for us is obvious.

However, this is every reason to hold the Legislature responsible for this, and not  turn it into a partizan debate.

To say, "there's always been consultants, this is nothing new" is a bit like telling a drowning woman "there's always been water, this is nothing new."

Thank you for the link, Sunday Hat.

I think all of our public services are being gutted for the profit of the few so although I would like to see consequences for misusing funds I do not think it will happen.  I think the corruption is rooted deeply and that when nothing changes it will be as Fidel has said, people will fall into further hopelessness and the abuse will continue.

As for fighting for the continuance of our current health care system, I see little point in it.  I think it is completely controlled by pharmaceutical companies that are only interested in profit and that in many cases it does far more harm than good. 

I do agree with you Tigana, something needs to be done but I can't see that something happening without doctors and nurses being involved and as long as they are convinced that their system just needs "more" how can it change? 

I believe a large part of rising costs to Canadian health care is from the the price of pharmaceutical drugs. Ralph Nader warned Canadians in the 1980's not to hand drug companies the rights to 20 and 30 year-long drug patents. Nader warned us that preventing generic drug companies from producing and offering cheaper pills and potions would only encourage big drug companies to divert R&D money into the pockets of CEO's and shareholders of those companies. And Ralph Nader was right all along. Big pharma's investment of money from our drug purchases has been paltry compared to the whopping profits theyve realized since then.

What Canada's feds need is the ability to negotiate lower prices for drug purchases from big pharma, like European governments are able to in keeping health care costs lower in those countries. It's a free market mechanism which Brian Mulroney's conservatives handed off to big pharmaceutical monopolies in the 1980's during that government's drive toward powerlessness and impotence for federal government in Ottawa and as practiced by Liberals after them.

That's right, it's Pinnochio's fault, and the fault of this Liberal government in general. This is what happens when 22 percent of regitered voters in Ontario hand dictatorial powers to one of the two old line parties. Phony-baloney majorities are not good for democracy period.