Ornge air ambulance only the tip of the iceberg?

The Toronto Star concludes an editorial on the Ornge affair (where the Star revealed that the top boss of the air ambulance was raking in an incredible $1.4 million annually) that Ornge should be more accountable to the public.

...Ontarians deserve more transparency and accountability from an entity that runs largely on $150 million of taxpayer funds and provides a vital service. At a time when the health system is under financial pressure, we need to know that public money is being properly spent.

Quite right.

But the excuse used for not revealing the enormous pay out was that Ornge (a not-for-profit entity expected to report its top salaries to the public) had set up for-profit entities. The Star does not mention that many, many totally for-profit outfits get bags of money to provide public services and are under no obligation to report publicly.

What about them? Don't we also "need to know that public money is being properly spent"?

Comments

Huge cuts in public sector wages predicted

The Ontario Financial Accountability Office (FAO) says that, with inflation, real wages in the public sector will decline 11.3% over the three year period 2021/2 - 2023/4 . This would radically deepen the trend towards lower wages during the last ten years. The FAO reports that since 2011, the average annual salary for the Ontario public sector employees (defined here as employees of schools, colleges, provincial government, provincial agencies, and hospitals) has increased by $10,385 -- or 1.6 per cent on average annually. This is the lowest increase of all the sectors and lower than inflation, which averaged 1.8 per cent per year. Over the ten years that would be about a 2% pay cut. The FAO reports that wage settlements were the lowest in the provincial public sector over the last decade: Hospital Wages Especially Challenged: The FAO predicts hospital wages will increase even less than in the public sector -- just ...

Too many public sector workers in Ontario?

Opponents of public services often try to portray the public sector as having grown disproportionately. In fact, since 1976, the number of public sector employees has not quite kept pace with the population. In 1976, the number of public sector employees in Ontario as reported by Statistics Canada averaged 830,800. By 2012, the number had increased to 1,330,700 -- a 60.2% increase. That sounds like significant growth -- true. But the population has increased from 8,413,779 in 1976 to 13,505,900 in 2012, a 60.5% increase. In other words, population growth has run slightly ahead of the growth in public sector employment. In 1976, close to 10% of the population worked in the public sector. It stayed pretty much this way until the Mike Harris government came to power when it dipped below 9%. It returned close to the historical range in the last six years or so, declining in 2012 to below the 1976 averag...

Are health care administrative expenses out of control in Ontario?

The Progressive Conservative government has justified its health restructuring plans with the claim that administrative expenses are much higher in Ontario than in Canada. When introducing the reforms, health minister Christine Elliott claimed , “Over the last five years, Ontario has spent 30% more than the Canadian average in administrative expenses on its health care system.” Elliott did not indicate her source of information. Presumably, however, the Progressive Conservatives are referring to the CIHI simplified and user friendly “ Your Health System ” graphs. Those graphs show “administrative expenses” in Ontario at 5.8% in Ontario while it is 4.5% in Canada. This CIHI measure is actually fairly narrowly defined. It is the percentage of “the legal entity’s” total expenses associated with the administrative, finance, human resources and communications functional centres. However “the legal entity” used for this estimate is [1] only...

Defend Public Healthcare

Search This Blog