Open Government Legislation Introduced in Ontario

[Michael Hardner]

Today, the Ontario government will re-introduce the proposed Public Sector and MPP Accountability and Transparency Act, 2014, and move forward with the Premier's commitment to lead the most open and transparent government in the country.

As per last week's Speech from the Throne, if passed, this bill would help in strengthening accountability, oversight and transparency across government and the broader public sector.

The proposed bill includes a wide range of measures that would:

• Enable the government to directly control compensation of senior executives in the broader public sector by establishing sector-specific hard caps and enforcement measures to ensure compliance.

• Expand the Ontario Ombudsman's role to include municipalities, school boards and universities.

• Require expense information to be posted online for cabinet ministers, parliamentary assistants, opposition leaders, their respective staff, and all MPPs. By making this voluntary practice law, Ontario would become a leader in expense reporting for elected representatives.

• Require all institutions covered by provincial and municipal freedom of information legislation to securely preserve and prohibit the wilful destruction of records. An offence with a fine of up to $5,000 would be introduced to enforce this requirement.

• Give the government greater oversight of air ambulance service providers by allowing it to appoint supervisors and special investigators, protect whistleblowers, and appoint provincial representatives to a board of directors.

• Allow the government to appoint a Patient Ombudsman to respond to complaints about public hospitals, long-term care homes, and community care access centres.

• Give the Provincial Advocate for Children and Youth ombudsman-like powers to investigate matters relating to children and youth who are involved with a children's aid society.

• Expand the scope of the Integrity Commissioner's review of executive expenses to all 197 classified agencies and four hydro organizations.

• Provide the Integrity Commissioner with investigative powers, including the ability to prohibit individuals from lobbying. Enforcement provisions would include stiffer fines of up to $100,000.

The proposed act builds on the Premier's commitment to reintroduce bills from the last legislative session and make government work for Ontarians.

http://news.ontario.ca/otb/en/2014/07/leading-an-open-and-accountable-government.html

Firstly, please don't even bother with cynical responses here since nobody with a brain would react otherwise. The Wynne and Harper governments are both trumpeting Open Government, even as they ostensibly duck, cover, and bury information and traces of information.

I have been reporting the progress of the OG movement, and as such I'm obliged to report that it will soon be law in Ontario. That is progress, at least on paper. I also point out that 3 of the points above directly address costs, and the others point to improved service and accountability.

Optimistic but not expectant.

[eyeball]

Still no sign of real flies on real walls behind the scenes. Accountability after the fact just doesn't cut it, I mean, a $5000 fine for shredding records? This seems typical of the sort of justice that is reserved for white-collar criminals.

I'd be more optimistic if there were a bunch of ethical micro-engineers and hackers developing the physical means to penetrate secrecy with video and audio recorders attached to tiny little robots...flies in other words...or maybe miniature spiders would work better.

[Topaz]

Wynne comes off as a person that means what she says, so more power to her if she actually does this, only time will tell.

[Michael Hardner]

Still no sign of real flies on real walls behind the scenes. Accountability after the fact just doesn't cut it, I mean, a $5000 fine for shredding records? This seems typical of the sort of justice that is reserved for white-collar criminals.

Except that it's not the white collars that do the actual shredding, it's regular people. Keep in mind that shredding documents is actual work.

$5000 means something to these people.

I'd be more optimistic if there were a bunch of ethical micro-engineers and hackers developing the physical means to penetrate secrecy with video and audio recorders attached to tiny little robots...flies in other words...or maybe miniature spiders would work better.

Well at least your sci-fi solution to the problem of openness has evolved a little...