The government lost a minister, and the NDP lost all credibility
Auditor General's report affirms integrity

In late July, Ontario Auditor General Jim McCarter released his report on the year-end grants made by the Ontario Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration in March. The Auditor was asked in late May by the Premier to look at the process by which the 2006 and 2007 grants had been made. In a nutshell, here's what the Auditor General found:

• The process by which the grants were awarded "was not open, transparent or accountable." In contrast to how grants from the same ministry had been handled the year previous, the 2007 grants were done too heavily from the Minister's office, on the basis of verbal discussions instead of formal, written proposals;
• There was no evidence that indicated that any organization received a grant because it had political ties;
• While the Citizenship and Immigration year-end grants amounted to only about 1.2 percent of the year-end grants in the fiscal years 2005-06 and 2006-07, the AG was concerned that too many of the recommendations were made by the Minister and his staff, and that the criteria and the decisions were poorly-documented.
• The Auditor recommended a list of processes, evaluation and eligibility criteria for the grants. The Premier accepted every recommendation, and will implement the Auditor General's report in full.

Our government, from its inception, has worked to shine the light of disclosure and accountability into areas that had remained closed before 2003. For example, the Auditor General can now audit such agencies as school boards and children's aid societies where before these were closed to public scrutiny. In this audit, our government came up short, even though the Auditor General found absolutely no evidence to sustain wild opposition allegations of political interference, or of misuse of the actual grant funds.

Indeed, Opposition Leader John Tory had to apologize at least twice when he and his Tory members wrongly accused ethnocultural organizations of ties with our government.

As a government member, I accept the Auditor General's report. My friend Mike Colle accepted his Minister's responsibility and resigned. Often in government, the process by which a service or program is chosen or delivered is as important as the actual outcome. Mike, in his zeal to help as many people as possible, as quickly as possible, forgot that, and he paid the price. He remains a good friend and an honest man.

Said Premier McGuinty: "I want to thank the Auditor General, who found examples of unacceptable administration of this program, and we are going to fix it."

How did it affect western Mississauga?

A few agencies and cultural communities serving western Mississauga did receive grants. None of those grants were called into question by the Auditor General. However, the Ontario NDP decided to play politics, and invoke the fact that my partner, Andrea Seepersaud, is employed by Peel's largest social services agency, Inter-Cultural Neighbourhood Social Services (ICNSS), and falsely allege that a 2006 grant that ICNSS received was due to influence from me.

The Auditor General was having none of this, and said three times in his report "there was no evidence that indicated that any organization received a grant because it had political ties." Common sense and ethics didn't stop the NDP back in April. A Toronto backbencher that people in western Mississauga have likely never heard of, Michael Prue, made a number of defamatory - and completely false - allegations that were meant to suggest that I had a role in a 2006 grant that ICNSS had received for what are called "sectoral improvements."

The truth is that the first I had ever heard of this $24,000 grant was when it was raised in the Ontario Legislature. As Andrea pointed out to me some time later, the grant represented less than eight-tenths of one percent of the ICNSS revenue for the 2005-06 fiscal year. And as an MPP, neither I nor my colleagues have ever been asked to influence a grant application for ICNSS under any circumstances.

It got more bizarre. Desperately trying anything they could, the NDP claimed that because I had helped ICNSS set up its web domain name more than a year before I was elected, somehow tied this social services agency with my riding association. I brought this especially stupid and offensive allegation straight to the Ontario Integrity Commissioner who dismissed it. Then the NDP said that because I was one of numerous MPPs who had read a petition in the Legislature, advocating that the Ministry of the Attorney General fund a program run by the agency, that too somehow linked my party with my partner's employer. Honest, I am not making this stuff up! You had to be there.

What are an MPP's duties and privileges?

As your MPP, I do have the ability to work with ministries and agencies of the Government of Ontario on behalf of my constituents. For example, if people have a birth certificate issue, we frequently help resolve it. I also worked very hard to get a GO Train station built at Lisgar, and it opens in a few weeks. I'm going to be taking the GO Train to work from that very station when it opens too. If my partner, Andrea, had been a manager with GO, or worked at Credit Valley Hospital, would it have prevented me from working on those critically-needed projects? Of course not!

MPPs are governed by the MPPs' Integrity Act. It sets out some logical and sensible principles to help MPPs do their work, represent their constituents, and remain independent of their constituents' issues. For example, I cannot interfere in the deliberations or in the ruling of a court, of a tribunal or a similar body, and I cannot be involved in a matter before the courts. Being my partner, or my friend, cannot get you any special treatment or favours, but nor can being associated with me disadvantage you or your organization in obtaining services or access to programs from the Government of Ontario.

What the Integrity Commissioner looks for is whether a party would personally benefit from a decision in which an MPP takes part. So, for example, reading a petition advocating the funding of community mediation, in which neither Andrea nor I would personally benefit, is not even close to the line. Indeed, as my constituent, ICNSS has a reasonable expectation that I would read such a petition that supports a service this community uses and needs.

How do year-end grants work?

In most organizations of any reasonable size, near the end of a calendar or fiscal year, managers take stock of what they have done, how their organization has performed, what they need, and whether they have any leftover resources to get it done. It's the same in government. Governments are required to set aside financial reserves that may not be needed, thus freeing up funds near the end of a fiscal year.

The economy may have done better than expected, which it did in the last two fiscal years. Expenses might have been lower than forecast, which they were, by about one percent, in the last two fiscal years. The accounting rules that determine what a government can do with taxpayers' money are set out by the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants. After the annual government audit is complete (usually mid-March), and before the end of the fiscal year on March 31st, governments sometimes have funds that were not used or allocated. If there are programs or purchases not made, this is often the time those 'year-end' decisions are made. If the funds are not allocated by March 31st, then CICA rules mandate that they must go to reduce government's long-term debt. That is a good thing.

This is the context within which these annual 'year-end' decisions are made by governments of every province, and at the federal level. What the Auditor General said, and what our government agrees with, and will implement, is that the proposals should be well-documented, the eligibility criteria should be clear, and that governments should be dealing with entities with which they have had an established relationship. This is where the Auditor General found that Minister Colle and his staff crossed the line. It is not how our government does business, now or in the past.

NDP MPP Michael Prue must now apologize and resign

NDP backbencher Michael Prue crossed the line of propriety and ethics in the Ontario Legislature. He wasn't acting as a responsible critic, which is his role. He made premeditated personal allegations against me, against my partner Andrea, and most importantly against the largest and possibly the most innovative of our social services agencies in Peel Region. Mr. Prue could, and should, have checked his allegations, or his sources, before speaking in the Legislature. He failed in his responsibility as an MPP, and as an opposition critic.

Mr. Prue hid behind his privileges speaking in the Legislative Chamber, and made false statements for which Andrea and I, and ICNSS, would have sued him for defamation of character if he had said the same things outside the Legislative Chamber.

Auditor General Jim McCarter, the Ontario Integrity Commissioner and the facts confirmed that every one of Prue's allegations were either improper or dead wrong. His credibility is gone forever. Now, he must do as Minister Colle did, and resign his seat immediately, and not seek re-election. He has disgraced the office of MPP. It has been days since Prue made his false statements in the Ontario Legislature. He and his party owe me and Andrea, and separately ICNSS and 70,000 people within Peel Region that this agency serves annually, an unreserved and public apology. And then he must resign his seat.

Aftermath

• You might find the synopsis of the facts of the NDP's false allegations on the ICNSS web site to be interesting. Check it out.
• On a personal note, Andrea and I thank our many friends, and the many people we scarcely knew, who reached out to us during those few days when the NDP tried to score cheap political points through this personal attack. We were truly touched by your cards, phone calls, e-mails and your friendship. We, and ICNSS, are definitely stronger for the experience.