Ontario’s doctors complain of being “deceived” by the Liberal government after several hundred fees paid for services were slashed to save $338.3 million this year.

Health Minister Deb Matthews announced Monday there would be 37 changes to the OHIP fee schedule, targeting hundreds of services provided by cardiologists, radiologists and ophthalmologists.

The doctors claim this will mean longer waits in emergency wards and for test results — and warn that patients could expect a harder time finding a family doctor or a specialist because of fewer physicians.

“Our doctors are the best paid in Canada,” said Matthews, whose gambit comes as the province’s bitter negotiations with the Ontario Medical Association, which represents 25,000 doctors, have stalled.

“Instead of another raise for doctors, we need a real wage freeze so we can invest in more home care,” she told a press conference at Toronto Rehab, a continuing-care hospital. “I was left with no choice.”

Dr. Doug Weir, the new president of the OMA, accused Matthews of not negotiating fairly because she has not moved from her initial bargaining stance yet now wants to slash $1 billion in fees and programs.

“Where I come from, holding your breath until you get what you want is not negotiating,” said Weir, who was on his first day on the job. “This is not a wage freeze, it is a cut.”

Matthews argues the OMA is looking for a $700 million boost and what is the equivalent of a 5 per cent raise for physicians, which works out to about $20,000 per doctor.

The OMA says this is false; they will take a two-year fee freeze and help find another $250 million in savings.

Weir, a Toronto child psychiatrist, said it is clear the government never had any intention of really negotiating with Ontario’s doctors.

“We have been deceived. In doing so, they have chosen confrontation over collaboration.”

The OMA has launched a $1.5 million print, radio, TV and online advertisement campaign in an attempt to arouse public sympathy.

While the doctors have promised not to stage a job action, such as a strike or working to rule, Weir predicted patients would feel the pain of the changes.

“Patients in Ontario, particularly seniors, will suffer from reduced access to medical care for blinding conditions like macular degeneration, glaucoma and diabetes,” he said, adding ultrasound and mammography waits could return to levels not seen for decades.

The changes, which affect several hundred of the 4,500 OHIP services, were filed Monday and are retroactive to April 1, said Matthews.

Insisting that she is choosing “seniors over specialists,” the minister stressed she still wants to work with doctors to hammer out an agreement.

“Our budget was explicit; we were looking for a real wage freeze. This comes as no surprise to doctors. I am hoping they will now come back to the table so we can continue to work.”

Weir’s predecessor, Dr. Stewart Kennedy, angrily denied on Friday that all the doctors want is a raise. They say this is a fight about the future of the health system as the boomer population rapidly greys and demands more services.

With 407 specialists billing OHIP more than $1 million each a year, the Liberals believe vast savings can, and must, be found as the province faces a $15-billion deficit.

Conciliation, first refused by the government but pushed for by the doctors, was agreed to late Friday. However, the Health Ministry placed a 48-hour time limit on talks, saying the OMA had until only Sunday night.

The doctors would not accept this, saying they would talk to Matthews about conciliation Monday.

She responded by regulating fees.

Payments for cataract surgeries will be cut to $397.75 from $441 — surgeries that took two hours in the 1980s now take 15 minutes, thanks to technological improvements. Fees for eye injections for retinal diseases will be cut to $90 from $189 over four years.

“Specialties have seen tremendous windfall profits because of enhanced technology. We need to share in some of those productivity changes. It is only appropriate we update fees to reflect reality,” said Matthews.

In some specialties, new technologies have boosted doctors’ pay to $700,000 a year on average, she said.

Payments for 250 different diagnostic radiology tests, such as X-rays, CT/MRI scans and ultrasound will be reduced by 11 per cent over four years.

Self-referrals — the practice of doctors referring patients back to themselves for additional procedures — will be curbed. Currently $88 million is spent on that, but the government wants that reduced to $44 million.

Matthews noted doctors’ pay has risen an average of 75 per cent since the Liberals were elected in 2003 — from $220,000 to $385,000.

Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak supported her move to impose the fee cuts and to freeze the total compensation package for doctors because “something has to happen.”

But Hudak said he’d go further by introducing a bill soon to impose a mandatory wage freeze on all public-sector workers with “no exceptions, no special deals” instead of waiting for wage freezes to be negotiated.

Premier Dalton McGuinty told Hudak that wage freeze legislation is too provocative, saying “we’re not going out there looking for a fight.”

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath chastised the government for taking the “my way or the highway” approach and not engaging the doctors in a more meaningful dialogue.

“The patients have become the ping pong ball in this high-stakes game.”

With files from Rob Ferguson

• Fee per service for any combination of retinal disease or glaucoma will be reduced to $25 from $63, and service will be limited to four times a year.

• Fees for anesthesia for conscious sedation (colonoscopies, cataracts, etc.) will be reduced to a combined fee of about $60 from $120.

• Electrocardiogram fees are being reduced to $4.95 from $9.90.

• Complete colonoscopy fee is being reduced to $197 from $218.90.

• Payments for cataract surgeries will be cut to $397.75 from $441.

• Fees for eye injections for retinal diseases will be cut to $90 from $189, over four years.

< http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/1174205–deb-matthews-slashes-fees-for-ohip-services-to-save-338-million >

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath says the Liberals’ surprise $275 million boost for child care and disabled benefits is “a very positive sign” on the eve of Tuesday’s key budget vote.

But Horwath said Saturday she would like to see more from Premier Dalton McGuinty’s minority Liberals before the New Democrats can commit to supporting the budget and averting a snap election.

“I’m really pleased that yesterday we saw some movement from the McGuinty Liberals,” she told reporters at Capital Espresso, a Parkdale cafe owned by the son of NDP MPP Cheri DiNovo.

“We’ve been waiting for movement and it’s a very positive sign. Of course, negotiations, conversations, discussions remain ongoing,” the NDP leader said.

“I’m looking forward to work with the government to make this budget more fair,” she said, adding she hopes to meet with McGuinty on Sunday instead of waiting until Monday’s scheduled meeting at Queen’s Park.

“I’ve asked him to not wait until the last minute,” she said.

“We know very well that this budget as it stands is not very fair for everyday families.”

Horwath said a sticking point remains the Liberals’ opposition to a wealth surtax on people making more than $500,000 a year.

“I’m not the kind of person that’s a my-way-or-the-highway person, but I am very, very concerned,” she said.

A new Forum Research poll found 78 per cent backing for that tax with only 17 per cent against. The levy is also hugely popular with Liberal MPPs, but McGuinty himself is wary of the scheme.

On Friday afternoon, the premier announced $242 million in unspecified “assistance” for daycare operators over three years, and $33 million in a 1 per cent increase in payouts for people on the Ontario Disability Support Plan.

He said the money would come from the education budget and from a plan to lower the price the government pays for the most popular generic drugs, saving $55 million annually.

There are 52 Liberal MPPs — excluding Speaker Dave Levac — in the 107-member Legislature, so the Grits need opposition backing to pass the budget.

With Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak’s 37 MPPs vowing to defeat the spending plan, only Horwath’s 17-member caucus can stop a $100 million election less than seven months after the Oct. 6 vote.

Sources say the Tories have nominated 90 candidates, enlisted 75 campaign managers, secured bank loans, and are organizing election buses in the event of a provincial vote that would come May 24.

< http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/1165754–ontario-budget-ndp-s-horwath-wants-more-from-mcguinty-before-backing-budget >

The Liberals are replacing the archaic “secret law” police used to place hundreds of people under arrest during the G20 summit in 2010.

The Public Works Protection Act has been shelved in favour of a new bill that would apply only to securing power plants and courthouses, said Community Safety Minister Madeleine Meilleur.

The legislation, introduced Wednesday, was created out of recommendations of former chief justice Roy McMurtry in the wake of the G20 fiasco. It is far narrower in scope than the old law.

“It will be limited because we are following Judge McMurtry’s advice and, according to him, the … Criminal Code covers the rest,” Meilleur said Wednesday.

The bill will allow people to be asked for identification and to be searched when they enter court buildings. It also allows for the use of reasonable force to remove a person where court proceedings are being conducted.

It provides the power to arrest a person committing any of the offences listed in the bill “without warrant and using reasonable force if necessary,” the legislation states. A person convicted of any of the offences can be fined up to $2,000, face imprisonment of up to 60 days, or both.

During the June 2010 Toronto G20 summit, the obscure 1939 Public Works Protection Act, enacted to secure against Nazi saboteurs early in World War II, was used to quietly pass a regulation giving police broad powers of arrest.

That directive was merely supposed to clarify police powers within the secure summit site at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, but people were misled into believing it applied to an area five metres outside the cordoned-off zone.

While only two of the 1,105 arrests made during the G20 related to the act, there was widespread outcry over the so-called secret law.

“This was an occasion for us to review legislation passed in the middle of the Second World War,” said Meilleur, who did not offer an apology for what many civil liberties groups felt was an abuse of power.

Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak said the Liberals “lost touch” with the public by using a World War II-era law to round up people during the summit.

“Nobody forced them to bring in the secret law at the G20. Nobody forced their arm,” said Hudak. “It was a major scandal for the province.”

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath said the new law is an “admission” of failure on the part of the Liberal government.

“They made a big mistake when they were preparing for the G20 and they’re ignoring the fact that mistake trampled people’s civil rights, civil liberties,” said Horwath.

McMurtry’s 54-page report on the old law noted the “potential for abuse” was “beyond troubling” and said it was a “loaded weapon” that threatened civil liberties.

Under the act, police or private security guards do not have to justify their actions against citizens, he pointed out.

< http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/1135110–secret-g20-law-to-be-scrapped >

Gloom – or Doom.

Ontarians could face higher hydro bills, bigger school classes, fewer hospitals, more expensive tuition and user fees to protect the future of provincial public services.

That’s the grim message from Don Drummond, chair of the commission on public-service reform.

His two-volume, 665-page report delivered Wednesday is so weighty that a table collapsed when Ontario Provincial Police officers unloaded copies in the media lock-up.

“Ontario faces more severe economic and fiscal challenges than Ontarians realize,” Drummond warned.

“We can no longer assume a resumption of Ontario’s traditional strong economic growth and the continued prosperity on which the province has built its public services,” he said.

“Our message will strike many as profoundly gloomy. It is one that Ontarians have not heard, certainly not in the recent election campaign, but one this commission believes it must deliver.”

While Premier Dalton McGuinty struck the Drummond commission in the March 2011 budget, the need for drastic cuts was rarely if ever broached by the Liberals, Progressive Conservatives or New Democrats in the Oct. 6 election.

All the major parties agreed that the deficit, which sits at $16 billion this year, could be eliminated by 2017-18 relatively painlessly.

Not so, warned Drummond, who projected the deficit would balloon to $30.2 billion in 2017-18 unless spending growth is radically curbed.

As first disclosed by the Star, overall increases must be capped at 0.8 per cent per year through 2017-18.

Health care spending, up an average of 6.3 per cent annually over the past five years, must be held to 2.5 per cent growth.

But Drummond admitted “not one jurisdiction in the world” over the past 30 years has managed to keep health costs to even that annual rate.

Primary and secondary education costs can rise only 1 per cent with colleges and universities going up 1.5 per cent and social programs just 0.5 per cent.

Everything else the government funds must be reduced by 2.4 per cent per year.

“Reform must be pervasive and speedy. The government will need to implement all the reforms we recommend … to restrain the growth of program spending enough to achieve balance by 2017-18,” he said.

With 362 recommendations — 105 on health alone — there is much for McGuinty’s Liberal government to digest.

Senior Liberal officials, speaking before Finance Minister Dwight Duncan was to meet with reporters later Wednesday, confided much of Drummond’s report would be taken under advisement.

Some of its tenets will be introduced in Duncan’s budget next month or are already under way with Health Minister Deb Matthews’ reforms announced two weeks ago.

But Liberal insiders told the Star that the report presents a “worst-case scenario” that could give the government political cover when less dramatic cuts are made later this year.

That is not what Drummond wanted to hear.

“This is not a smorgasbord from which the government can choose only the tastiest morsels and ignore the less palatable,” he said.

“We can all agree that change is disruptive, but the medicine does not go down more easily if it is dragged out over a long period.”

Although Drummond was not allowed to consider tax hikes, he said he “cheated a bit” and found $2 billion in “enhanced revenues” though higher fees and better collection of monies owed the province.

But the lion’s share of the savings he identified came from cutting some of the Liberal government’s most treasured achievements, including:

• scrapping or revamping full-day kindergarten;

• raising the 20-student class-size cap in junior grades to 23 children and increasing the average in junior grades from 24.5 to 26 students and from 22 to 24 in secondary school;

• ending the Ontario “clean air benefit,” the 10 per cent rebate to electricity bills that costs the treasury $1 billion a year;

• cancelling the new 30 per cent Ontario tuition grant for college and university undergraduate students unless the overall post-secondary budget can be kept to a 1.5 per cent rise;

• extending the period municipal social service costs will be uploaded back to Queen’s Park by two years to 2020

• amalgamating some of Ontario’s 151 hospital corporations.

But Drummond urged against “across-the-board cuts,” wage freezes or targets for civil-service job reduction, though he implored the government to be creative.

“Do not hang on to public assets or public service delivery when better options exist. Consider privatizing assets and moving to the private delivery of services wherever feasible,” he said.

That does not mean a fire sale of assets.

“Do not partially or fully divest any or all of the province’s government enterprises – Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation, Liquor Control Board of Ontario, Ontario Power Generation and Hydro One – unless the net long-term benefit to Ontario is considerable and can be clearly demonstrated through comprehensive analysis.”

Still, he suggested the LCBO improve its purchasing power and open more stores to generate revenue.

As well, the gambling agency should close one its two head offices — in Toronto or Sault Ste. Marie — as well as one of the two Niagara casinos and allow more slot machines to be installed beyond just at racetracks or existing gaming facilities.

< http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/1131820–drummond-report-higher-hydro-bills-more-user-fees-urged-in-sweeping-report?bn=1 >

Finance Minister Dwight Duncan is demanding Ottawa release a classified federal report that reveals Ontario gets shortchanged by the national equalization wealth-sharing scheme.

In the wake of revelations in the Star, Duncan wrote Finance Minister Jim Flaherty on Thursday urging the federal government to lift the veil of secrecy shrouding the 67-page study.

“The report makes it increasingly clear that because of the policies of the government of Canada, Ontario families are subsidizing programs and services in other parts of Canada that Ontarians themselves do not enjoy,” the Ontario treasurer wrote.

Duncan fired off his letter after the Star obtained an uncensored version of a 2006 report entitled, “An Operational Expenditure Need Equalization Formula for Canada.”

Written by Peter Gusen, then director of federal-provincial relations at the finance department in Ottawa, it concluded Ontario and B.C. are at a severe disadvantage to Quebec and the Atlantic provinces.

That’s because the federal government does not take into account that it’s more expensive to live and work in some provinces than others when doling out funds from the $15.4 billion equalization pool.

While Gusen’s report was completed in the final days of former prime minister Paul Martin’s administration in 2006, a blacked-out version wasn’t released until 2010 after Matthew Mendelsohn, director of the Mowat Centre for Policy Innovation at the University of Toronto, sought its release.

“We’ve always said that the equalization formula penalizes Ontario,” Duncan said from Washington, where he is attending pre-budget meetings.

“The system in use is inherently biased against Ontario. This year, for instance, we’re putting in about $6 billion and then getting back $2.2 billion. That does rise next year to $3.2 billion,” he said.

Flaherty’s office did not commit to releasing the complete report even though the censored version has 27 redactions, including key charts to compare provinces’ needs for health, education, and other services.

Instead, federal officials countered that Gusen’s study had been surpassed by other research.

“The report in question was prepared in 2005-06, well before our Conservative government’s landmark changes to the transfer system and before Ontario qualified for equalization for the first time ever,” said a senior official, insisting “the report that matters” is a 147-page review led by former Alberta deputy treasurer Al O’Brien in May 2006.

O’Brien’s panel said equalization should continue to focus on provinces’ “fiscal capacity” instead of their respective spending needs.

“There is no conclusive evidence that it would have a material effect on the size and allocation of equalization payments,” it said.

Gusen, however, argued that that is too simplistic.

“Cost matters as much or more than work load,” he wrote. “Ontario and B.C., typically regarded as ‘rich,’ are invariably the high-cost provinces. As a result, they are more often than not the most needy.”

Duncan stressed it isn’t just semantics, warning that with a $16 billion provincial deficit to eliminate, Ontarians can expect to hear more about Canada’s fiscal imbalance in the March budget.

“We’ll have a very strong and potent narrative in the budget around the fiscal arrangements of the federation,” he said.

“It’s time that the biases against Ontario be removed and that we begin to look at this thing realistically.”

< http://www.thestar.com/article/1121975–dwight-duncan-demands-ottawa-release-censored-report-showing-ontario-is-shortchanged-by-equalization >

Labour Minister Charles Sousa says the Ontario government has made strides to help the most vulnerable workers, but concedes more can be done to stem “wage theft.”

In the wake of a new report that found one-third of low-income workers had their wages withheld or stolen by employers, Sousa insisted Queen’s Park would not tolerate such activity.

“We can always do better. I recognize that there are people still who are vulnerable and require support,” the minister said Thursday.

“As a result over the last number of years recently we’ve doubled the number of inspectors, we’ve got over 11,000 inspections that have been made and we’ve recovered $65 million in lost wages,” he said.

“So the initiatives that we’ve taken have been a result of the ongoing advocacy of individuals out in the community and we’ve taken steps and we will continue to target these very areas that are being considered.”

Sousa’s comments came after a Workers’ Action Centre report found one in three of 520 casual and temporary workers surveyed in the Greater Toronto Area and Windsor had been victims of “wage theft.”

It concluded that “the lack of protection in Ontario workplaces leaves many of the workers … with little hope of getting the wages they’re owed, resulting in significant economic hardship.”

NDP MPP Cheri DiNovo (Parkdale-High Park) said that’s an indictment of the Liberal government.

“That’s a very, very sad commentary on the deplorable state of employment standards in this province,” she said.

DiNovo urged the government to follow recommendations such as targeting “industries like cleaning, hospitality, retail and construction, where newcomers to our province have a long, long history of substandard employment practices.”

Sousa, however, said the Liberals have done more to help vulnerable workers than previous administrations in their eight years in office.

“Between 1989 and 2003 — that was between the time when both the NDP and the Conservatives were in power — there were 97 prosecutions initiated under the Employment Standards Act,” he said.

< http://www.thestar.com/news/ontario/article/990469–more-can-be-done-to-combat-wage-theft-labour-minister-admits >

The Liberals are scrapping more than a dozen redundant agencies in the wake of a sweeping report urging better governance of provincial organizations.

And sources told the Star more are on the chopping block with Ontario’s Byzantine electricity sector poised for streamlining.

Finance Minister Dwight Duncan, scrambling to rein in an $18.7 billion budget deficit this year, announced the latest changes Tuesday.

Duncan said he wants to “get value out of every dollar and focus funds on the priorities of Ontario families.”

“We’ve gone beyond the goal we set to reduce the number of provincial classified agencies by five per cent,” he said, referring to the 258 agencies, boards, commissions, councils, authorities, foundations and trusts overseen by Queen’s Park.

To that end, Duncan has taken a leaf out of Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak’s book.

Hudak, who leads public opinion polls with an election set for Oct. 6, has promised “a mandatory sunset review process that forces every government body to justify their existence and continued value to the public.”

The Liberals’ elimination of the 13 obsolete agencies — including melding the Stadium Corporation of Ontario, which managed the province’s interests in the SkyDome, into a previously announced hybrid of Infrastructure Ontario and the Ontario Realty Corporation — will save only $200,000 a year.

The government will, however, reap $4.2 million from the stadium agency’s bank account for provincial coffers, and any additional assets will be sold off.

Gone are the Toronto Area Transit Operating Agency, the Social Assistance Review Board, the Healing Arts Radiation Protection Commission, and the North Pickering Development Corporation, among others.

Untouched — for now — are the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario, Metrolinx, Cancer Care Ontario, eHealth Ontario, the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation and others.

Also not yet being revamped are Ontario Power Generation and Hydro One, though sources confide changes could loom for the Ontario Power Authority in Duncan’s March 29 budget.

Insiders say the Liberals — worried Hudak’s complaint about “bloated hydro bureaucracy” is gaining traction with voters angry at soaring energy costs — are considering some radical restructuring.

That would see the functions of the power authority, which runs green energy and conservation programs in the province, absorbed by both the Independent Electricity System Operator and the Ontario Electricity Financial Corporation.

Tuesday’s move came as the government finally released a report by Rita Burak, the former head of the Ontario public service, recommending improvements to the province’s agencies.

Burak — whose 119-page review was delivered to Premier Dalton McGuinty on Dec. 20 — said Ontario’s agencies are well governed, but in need of improvement.

The former cabinet secretary and one-time board chair of both Hydro One and eHealth found some don’t bother to issue annual reports.

“These time frames were not being universally adhered to,” she concluded.

Her study found inexperienced appointees can cause problems for agencies because “they may not appreciate the full public service ethos.”

Duncan said the government would adopt Burak’s recommendations.

< http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/954173–mcguinty-government-slashes-redundant-agencies >

A new union-funded advertising blitz is attacking Premier Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals and Tim Hudak’s Progressive Conservatives for supporting tax cuts for corporations.

The $100,000 campaign by a group cheekily calling itself People for Corporate Tax Cuts claims on its slick website peopleforcorporatetaxcuts.ca that its “biggest supporters” are McGuinty and Hudak.

An actress portraying “Nuella Warkworth,” who is billed as “the president, chair, CEO, COO” of the organization, says in the YouTube spots that every Ontario household must fork over $500 to cover the business tax cuts.

“And if you can’t come up with the $500, the government will just take it out of your public services like hospitals, schools, and other luxuries,” intones the bespectacled spokeswoman in her best chipper Sarah Palin imitation.

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath, who would be the greatest political beneficiary of the ads funded by the Ontario Public Service Employees’ Union, praised the initiative.

But Horwath insisted the New Democrats have nothing to do with OPSEU’s crusade, which she only learned about on Facebook on Monday night.

“I was amused by it. It is very funny but at the same time it has an important message,” she told reporters at Queen’s Park Wednesday.

“We want to see a tax plan in this province that is fair, one that does actual positive things for the economy.”

Horwath has pledged to raise corporate taxes to bankroll the elimination of the 8 per cent provincial portion of the 13 per cent harmonized sales tax from electricity and natural gas bills if she wins the Oct. 6 provincial election.

OPSEU president Warren Thomas said the union spent $100,000 on the ads because members “want corporate tax cuts to be part of the election campaign.

“If it gets people’s attention and gets people thinking and talking about it, that is a good thing,” said Thomas “Humour always paves the way.”

The website features a running tally of hundreds of millions of dollars being spent on corporate tax cuts and boasts a shop for gear such as emblazoned boxer shorts, pet bowls, baby jumpers, mugs and T-shirts.

McGuinty, for his part, said the organization is oversimplifying his administration’s taxation reforms.

“It is a standard criticism offered by the left. But I would ask all Ontarians to take a good hard look at what we are doing in terms of tax reductions,” the premier said.

“We have a comprehensive package of tax reforms that includes personal income tax cuts,” he said, noting tens of thousands of low-income Ontarians have been “taken off the tax rolls completely.”

“There is a new children’s activity tax credit. There is an Ontario property and energy tax credit. We are cutting the price of electricity. If you put it all together people would have to come to the conclusion we are trying to bring a holistic approach to tax reforms that take into account the needs of all Ontarians.”

Hudak, meanwhile, was unapologetic for being “a strong supporter of reducing the tax burden for families and seniors as well as job creators.

“The problem is we were actually on course to having among the lowest taxes on businesses and job creators in Canada and then Dalton McGuinty came into office (in 2003), he jacked them up to among the highest,” said Hudak.

“It was a catastrophic decision. It had a major impact on our manufacturing, our business sector and (was) one of the key reasons why Ontario lost some 300,000 manufacturing jobs in the first few years of this government,” he said.

While the Liberals have since reduced corporate tax rates to levels that have met with approval from the federal Conservative government, Hudak stressed he remains concerned they will increase again.

“I actually don’t believe that Dalton McGuinty may carry through on any commitments to reduce taxes. It’s not in his DNA. This premier is hard-wired to tax and spend.”

< http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/924931–union-ads-attack-mcguinty-hudak-for-backing-tax-cuts >

It was “illegal” and “likely unconstitutional” for Premier Dalton McGuinty’s government to pass a secret regulation that police used to detain people near Toronto’s G20 summit of world leaders last summer, says Ombudsman Andre Marin.

In a scorching 125-page report entitled Caught in the Act, Marin said the measure “should never have been enacted” and “was almost certainly beyond the authority of the government to enact.”

“Responsible protesters and civil rights groups who took the trouble to educate themselves about their rights had no way of knowing they were walking into a trap – they were literally caught in the Act; the Public Works Protection Act and its pernicious regulatory offspring,” he told reporters.

Marin recommended that the little-known 1939 legislation should be revised or replaced and protocols developed so the public is made better aware when police powers are modified. He has given the government six months to make progress on this front.

As first disclosed by the Star on June 25, the Liberal cabinet – at the request of Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair—quietly designated areas within the G20 security zone a “public work” using regulation 233/10 under the Act.

“By changing the legal landscape without fanfare in this way, regulation 233/10 operated as a trap for those who relied on their ordinary legal rights,” wrote Marin in his exhaustive post-mortem, which is illustrated with 42 colour photos.

“The effect of the regulation … was to infringe on the freedom of expression in ways that do not seem justifiable in a free and democratic society,” the watchdog continued.

“It gave police powers that are unfamiliar in a free and democratic society. Steps should have been taken to ensure that the Toronto Police Service understood what they were getting.”

Marin was especially critical of the province’s ministry of community safety and correctional services, which was then run by Rick Bartolucci, who McGuinty later shuffled to run the ministry of municipal affairs and housing.

“The ministry simply handed over to the Toronto Police Service inordinate powers, without any efforts made to ensure those powers would not be misunderstood,” he wrote.

“Apart from insiders in the government of Ontario, only members of the Toronto Police Service knew that the rules of the game had changed, and they were the ones holding the deck of ‘go directly to jail’ cards.”

The temporary regulation, enacted June 2, was supposed to clear up any confusion for police officers if they had to stop someone inside the restricted area around the Metro Toronto Convention Centre where world leaders met June 26-27.

But Torontonians were left with the erroneous impression that police had been granted the power to arrest people who refused to provide identification or submit to a search within five metres of the outer perimeter.

Community Safety Minister Jim Bradley, who replaced Bartolucci in August, will formally respond to the report later Tuesday, but sources say the government is likely to embrace most of Marin’s findings.

In September, Bradley appointed former Ontario chief justice Roy McMurtry to probe the Public Works Protection Act. McMurtry is expected to report back on his findings next year.

That move came amid calls for the Second World War-era law to be modernized after the G20 fiasco.

Thousands of protesters took to city streets with small bands of vandals smashing shop windows, torching police cars, and creating mayhem in the downtown core.

While police arrested 1,105 people and charged 278, the majority of detainees were released without being booked and most charges have since been dropped.

Along with McMurtry’s probe, retired judge John W. Morden is doing an investigation of the G20 command structure and policing model at the behest of the Toronto Police Services Board.

< http://www.thestar.com/news/torontog20summit/article/902817–ombudsman-charges-g20-secret-law-was-illegal >

Governor General David Johnston used his first official visit to Queen’s Park to implore MPPs to make it easier for women to get pregnant and for families to adopt children.

“We have some gaps with respect to adoption, we have some gaps with respect to fertility,” Johnston said Thursday at the Legislature.

In 2008, the McGuinty Liberals asked Johnston to head the Expert Panel on Infertility and Adoption, as part of an election promise.

The panel’s August 2009 report “Raising Expectations” recommended Ontario become the best jurisdiction in the world in which to have a family, the Governor General said.

To do that, the report called for an overhaul of the province’s adoption bureaucracy, which currently allows thousands of Crown wards to languish in foster care while several thousand families wait years to adopt.

It recommended policy changes to make it easier for Crown wards with court-ordered access to their birth families or relatives to be adopted into permanent homes.

And it pressed for modest adoption subsidies to help families manage the extra cost of raising children with histories of abuse and neglect. Subsidies of $8,000 to $15,000 annually would save taxpayers as much as $28 million within five years, the panel estimated.

“We have 10,000 Crown wards in our province now each year — children who’ve been taken away from their families because they do not have a safe environment,” Johnson said. “We only place five per cent of those 10,000 children each year.

“Think of . . . the physical cost of that and then think of the significance of those 95 per cent who do not have a permanent, loving family,” he said. “We can do better than that and I know we will.

“I encourage all of you members of the Legislative Assembly to read that report first of all for the values that it speaks to . . . and then to identify those gaps and systematically” to deal with them, Johnston said.

Johnston has five daughters and seven grandchildren. Two of his grandchildren were adopted from Colombia; two are the result of fertility treatment; and two came about through a surrogate mother carrying the embryos of one of his daughters and sons-in-law.

Premier Dalton McGuinty, who counts one of Johnston’s daughters as a senior adviser, hailed the new governor general.

“Ontarians are with you all the way,” McGuinty said.

A government official said the premier was aware Johnston was going to mention his work on the provincial panel during his visit.

“We’re reviewing the report now and working with various ministries, including Health, to determine the best way forward,” the official said.

“The global economic recession hit Ontario hard, and this review is helping us look at how we can act given the tight fiscal situation we are in,” the official added. “We are looking forward to taking action on the report, and having more to say soon.”

Adoption reform advocates praised Johnston for highlighting the issue in his new role.

“I think these are values that the McGuinty government shares with the Governor General and I hope that they will take this time to step up and act,” said expert panel member William Falk.

Falk, a father of two adopted sons, joined the Adoption Council of Ontario at Queen’s Park last month to press the province for action on the report that is now 15 months old.

All the key interest groups support the main thrust of the expert panel report, he said.

“That report was financially rigorous,” he added. “The returns on this are quick and long-term.”

< http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/900901–governor-general-urges-ontario-to-act-on-adoption-and-infertility >