Paying the price for the eHealth scandal

Two scandals and millions of taxpayer dollars later, former Minister of Health David Caplan has now become the first member of the McGuinty Government to lose his job for spending gone berserk.
       
Caplan, who refused to step down during the OLG scandal, dodged and delayed for five months on the McGuinty electronic (eHealth) scandal. His duck and run ended with a just hours before the Auditor General’s scathing report into untendered sweetheart deals, and a billion dollars of out-of-control spending.

Previously, CEO Sarah Kramer and Chairman Alan Hudson resigned on revelations of favouritism awarding lucrative contracts to consultants without competitive tenders.

In his report, Auditor General McCarter reveals:

“In our opinion, the allegations that contracts were awarded to certain consultants and vendors without giving other firms the chance to compete for the business are largely true. In fact, we estimate that two-thirds of the value of all eHealth Ontario contracts was sole-sourced. Allegations that the agency showed favouritism in awarding some of these contracts are also true”

Quite honestly, after the Caplan announcement, I also expected the resignation of former Health Minister George Smitherman. Many of the biggest abuses of taxpayer money occurred under the eye of Smitherman.  
As McCarter notes, under both Ministers Caplan and Smitherman, the eHealth program was rife with problems, becoming somewhat of a consultant free-for-all with millions going out the door to pay fees for which no accountability was demanded.

“By 2008, the Branch was engaging more than 300 consultants compared to fewer than 30 full-time ministry employees. Consultants were not only managing other consultants but also at times had the authority to hire more consultants, sometimes from their own firm

Further, Mr. Smitherman was also a member of the Liberal cabinet committee that approved a massive $30 million eHealth untendered contract to Liberal friends at IBM – fellow caucus members Dwight Duncan, Gerry Phillips, Monique Smith, Ted McMeekin and Michael Chan also sat on that committee.

What bothers me – and many I talk to locally – is the lack of accountability underlining a seeming culture of entitlement. A culture that has allowed $1 billion in precious health care dollars to be lost forever.

Clearly, the eHealth initiative was designed to save us money while creating seamless and speedy access to individual health information – so far it has cost us a billion and we are left with nothing…..this almost makes gun registration look credible.

And, at time of writing we received word that the story gets worse…

The same day of the Auditor General’s report came word that an audit of Cancer Care Ontario showing the provincial agency handed out consultant contracts in some of the same questionable ways as eHealth. It gave a consulting firm $18.7 million in deals over two years, some in the form of so-called "follow-on" agreements, a practice that allowed them to be added on to current contracts without being opened to bids.

Between eHealth and the Cancer Care revelation, we are seeing Ontario government program spending running amok.

Caplan’s resignation and the Auditor’s report underline the fact that Ontario families have been ripped off and will now have to work longer and harder and pay more in taxes just to support the culture of entitlement that the McGuinty Liberal government has created.