Don’t hobble Toronto’s accountability watchdogs

Toronto city council is set to discuss merging its four accountability officers into two, but it’s a move that would go against good government.

Thestar.com
March 30, 2015
By David Cooper

Toronto city hall’s accountability watchdogs are at risk of being crippled by a merger of their roles and offices. That outcome would, no doubt, delight politicians hoping to escape expert oversight. But it should worry anyone who values openness in public institutions, efficiency, and exposure of bureaucratic wrong-doing.

Toronto city hall’s accountability watchdogs are at risk of being crippled by a merger of their roles and offices. That outcome would, no doubt, delight politicians hoping to escape expert oversight. But it should worry anyone who values openness in public institutions, efficiency, and exposure of bureaucratic wrong-doing.

“Two heads aren’t always better than one,” explained Councillor Stephen Holyday, author of the motion before council. He’s asking for a report on the practicality of such mergers, arguing it may be more efficient to have accountability officers “wear two hats.”

Ideally, their staff would be integrated as well. “They could actually share investigators,” Holyday said in an interview on Monday. “It doesn’t matter if they’re doing an audit or an ombudsman investigation - you’ve got strength in that.”

Holyday’s mix-and-match approach to public accountability reveals, at the very least, a basic lack of understanding. The jobs he’s considering combining serve very different functions. Toronto’s ombudsman, for example, investigates citizen complaints about flawed municipal services and unfair treatment by city staff. The task of the auditor general, on the other hand, is to assist council in finding value-for-money in city operations.

Those two “hats” won’t fit easily onto one head. Likewise for merging the integrity commissioner, who oversees the conduct of the mayor and councillors, with the lobbyist registrar, who rides herd on municipal lobbyists and regulates their conduct.

Combining the role and staff of these accountability watchdogs risks diluting each office’s focus and producing less oversight - not more.

Holyday, a first-term councillor, says his goal is simply to spur discussion of the issue. “It is only a look.” But there’s more afoot than that. As reported by the Star’s David Rider, a merger of some watchdog functions is being actively discussed in the recesses of Toronto city hall.

City manager Joe Pennachetti has publicly pointed out that council has the power to combine these operations, and he expressed a willingness to report back on the matter if asked. And Mayor John Tory is on record as saying that having these offices operate together is something “we should look at, including the resource allocation question and the mandates.”

None of this bodes well for public accountability. City council is set to discuss watering down protections almost a decade after a landmark corruption inquiry, headed by Justice Denise Bellamy, resulted in more open and responsible government in Toronto. It’s a move in utterly the wrong direction.