An auditor who uses polling just like politicians
Why does Bonnie Lysyk offer auditor’s prescriptions for political decisions? Values instead of value for money?

Thestar.com
By MARTIN REGG COHN
Dec. 10, 2016

If you lived on another planet, you’d be alarmed by the auditor general’s latest depiction of Queen’s Park as a black hole. And a topsy turvy world where bridges are built upside down.

That terrifying discovery can be found on page 496 of Bonnie Lysyk’s annual report describing a problem-plagued contractor on a Metrolinx bridge project:

“In fact, it installed one truss upside down,” she announces.

A truss, as the auditor helpfully explains, is the metal skeleton of a bridge that underpins its structure. Wait — how do you upturn a bridge?

Turns out you can’t. According to Metrolinx, “It was a support beam, not a truss, that was installed out of alignment,” and the contractor was later terminated.

Nothing for Metrolinx to be proud of, but good on them for owning up to it — and fixing it. But was the fix in by an auditor bidding for bigger headlines?

Progressive Conservative Leader Patrick Brown jumped on the auditor’s fanciful story of Metrolinx paying “to build a bridge upside down.” Fair enough, given his political ambition, but an auditor’s mission is non-partisan. Her job is to ensure the government gets value for money in its $134-billion budget by investigating waste, not exaggerating it.

Consider the chapter she devotes to alleged advertising abuses. The auditor recounts in agonizing detail how the Liberals decided last year to limit her power to vet and veto advertising, setting the stage for shocking abuses:

“Since the changes . . . came into effect last June, government spending on advertising has increased,” notes the auditor, describing it as “substantial.”

By her count, ad spending went from $30 million in 2014-15 to $43.7 million in 2015-16. Yes, that’s a big year-to-year jump.

But go back to previous years, and the numbers tell a different story — more of a non-story. Government figures show total ad spending reached $41.5 million in 2011-12, before dipping down to $28.1 million in 2014-15 (roughly corresponding to the auditor’s number), and then bouncing back up again to $42.9 million in 2015-16.

Bottom line: What the auditor describes as a “substantial” increase was merely a return to the previous trend line.

What’s more bizarre is how obsessed the auditor has become with advertising — revisiting the issue on three separate occasions since her powers were trimmed last year. After winning government in 2003, the Liberals gave the auditor unprecedented new powers to oversee the process, but had second thoughts a decade later about wasting money on redoing and redesigning ads deemed too partisan (too much “Liberal” red on bricks or apples).

How partisan? Here’s where Ontario’s ad dollars went last year, in descending order: pensions; sexual violence and harassment; health and sex education; Pan Am Games and traffic management; climate change; agriculture; anti-smoking; saving bonds; healthy kids; and immunization.

Like all governments, the Liberals hope to score political points where they can. But Lysyk seems most miffed by an ad showing a “well-known Canadian environmentalist” — that would be David Suzuki — warning kids about the perils of global warming. The spot “appeared designed to create apprehension about the effects of climate change so viewers will be more likely to support Ontario’s Climate Change Action Plan.”

Imagine trying to rattle and rally people at a time of indifference and intransigence toward global warming. The auditor disapproves.

Elsewhere, Lysyk complains that the Ontario Energy Board — an independent regulator — does not compel natural gas utilities to break out the costs of cap and trade (a complex calculation, to be sure). So she took matters into her own hands and did what campaigning politicians do.

She ordered a public opinion poll.

“We contracted a national survey company to conduct a broad survey of Ontario natural gas ratepayers, and it found that 89 per cent of respondents thought it important to disclose the impact of cap and trade on natural gas bills.”

Right or wrong (there are reasonable arguments on both sides) it is wrong-headed for an auditor to lecture elected governments that they must heed — not lead — public opinion, and also instruct an independent regulator to bend.

The auditor carps about partisan advertising. And then commissions her own polls. Lysyk opposes the government’s climate change ads. Then she proposes emphasizing the consumer costs of cap and trade — claiming, implausibly, this would somehow boost popular support.

Surely that should be a political decision. Not an auditor’s prescription.

The anti-government animus manifested by former ombudsman André Marin — who ran for the Tories in a byelection last month, barely a year after leaving his old job — is a path best avoided. Auditors are hired to perform value for money audits, not to proclaim their political values.

That’s what opposition politicians do. And how governments win or lose elections.