Niagara Falls Review - Staff Writer
There's "eHealth-style rot" at the Niagara Parks Commission, say provincial Conservative MPPs who invoked the image of one of Ontario's biggest scandals and compared the agency's chairwoman Fay Booker to the eHealth CEO fired by the government last year.
"Fay Booker is the Minister's hand-picked appointee who, within months of being on the job, handed out a sweetheart deal to friends at her former firm, approved a half-million dollar sole-source contract and tried to pay herself more," Conservative tourism critic Ted Arnott said during Question Period Thursday at Queen's Park.
Thornhill MPP Peter Shurman said "eHeatlh-style rot" is spreading throughout the agency.
But Tourism Minister Michael Chan continued to back Booker, saying she's reforming the agency entrusted with managing the public parkland and attractions along the Niagara River.
Booker questioned why opposition members are "getting nervous" about what the overhaul of an agency with a long reputation as an "old boys' club" might uncover, and how far previous practices go back.
"I'm actually making some changes at Niagara Parks. What is it they don't like about the changes?" she said in an interview.
There was an anonymous letter in 2001 to MPPs advising them of unusual practices at the Niagara Parks Commission. That would mean the previous Conservative government was in power when someone was trying to point out problems.
At Queen's Park, Arnott compared Booker to eHealth's former chief executive officer Sarah Kramer, who was fired in 2009 after her agency was embroiled in a scandal over the exorbitant expenses it approved for its consultants, the awarding of government contracts to friends and Kramer's attempt to pay herself a $114,000 bonus shortly after starting her $380,000-a-year job.
Booker didn't know precisely how much she had been paid since taking the part-time job that pays $250 a day when she does NPC business. She said she will tell The Review the exact amount, but added the comparison to Kramer's eHealth salary isn't warranted.
Arnott would not say Booker should be fired like Kramer was.
"I'm not prepared to make that statement today. We certainly brought forward sufficient evidence in the House today, that the Minister has to review and get to the bottom of," the Guelph-area MPP said in a later interview.
Chan repeated there's an audit already under way to look at questionable spending at the Niagara Parks Commission.
Booker said she's not charging latte coffees to the agency – the kind of controversial expenses that triggered the scandal at eHealth, the government agency created to make electronic health records for Ontarians.
"I have done more in six months than what previous chairs did in years. I am not sitting on my duff collecting a paycheque," Booker said.
To prove she's not milking the commission, Booker forwarded The Review an email confirming she returned the free pass to commission-owned golf courses and attractions commissioners are given.
Conservatives criticized Booker over the way the parks commission picked accounting firm Grant Thornton as its new auditor, replacing Niagara Falls-based Crawford Smith and Swallow.
Booker, an accountant, worked for Grant Thornton between 2000 and 2004. She's retired from the company and doesn't receive any payment from them now.
Booker said a corporation should change auditors periodically because when auditors get too cozy with their clients, they might be less vigilant.
Booker defended the commission's 6-5 vote to hire Grant Thornton even though it didn't submit the lowest bid among three companies considered for the auditing job.
"You do not pick your auditor based on price. Do you want a cheap audit being done?" she said.
Auditors have already uncovered what they called "weaknesses" in the computer system and who had access to accounts payable and how much they were able to do. Those weaknesses will be discussed at the commission's next meeting in January.
Conservatives also went after Booker for trying to "double" the salaries of commissioners.
Booker said when she became chairwoman, she reduced the frequency of meetings and agreed to pay commissioners for time spent preparing for meetings. Board meetings are now held every other month instead of monthly and committee meetings are quarterly instead of monthly.
Decision-making can be improved by holding fewer but longer meetings, and discussing "more robust material," and having commissioners come better prepared, Booker said.
Chan continued to defend Booker in the legislature Thursday, saying the opposition members were "wrong" about the information they based the eHealth comparison on.
He repeated the position he has taken for weeks about NPC controversies.
"We have a chair at the commission that is steering the commission in the right direction… The commission is making significant progress," Chan said.
"We are doing exactly what Minister Chan wants. He wants transparency and he wants it to come out," Booker said in an interview.
Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath called for Premier Dalton McGuinty to ask Auditor General Ja