Bill G122 Broader Public Sector Accountability Oct. 27

Mr. Peter Tabuns: It's my pleasure to speak following my colleague from Nickel Belt, who I think surveyed the landscape that we're dealing with, a landscape in which a small number of people are going growing very wealthy off a system that we need on a daily basis to ensure the health of people in this province.
My colleague went through the abuses of eHealth, of consultants working for hospitals and the weaknesses of this bill. There's no question that eHealth was a wake-up call to the practices that are going on on the part of this government, and when that wake-up call was heard, the Premier rolled over and hit "snooze," and things went on.

I want to correct the version of history put forward by the member from Thunder Bay-Atikokan. It was the member from Nickel Belt, in that standing committee, who pressed for the inquiry by the Auditor General to give us the information that we have today. Let's be very clear: She was the one who made sure that these problems were brought to light.

I want to speak about her comments on the bill itself. If you look at that bill, you'll note that public money can't be used for lobbyists, but if a hospital has non-public money, it can use that. And if you've worked with accountants, if you've heard of fun with numbers, you know that money can be shifted around to cover a multitude of sins. The way this bill is written, it will give certain small steps forward around access to information, but in terms of curbing lobbying, this bill is not going to be adequate to do that. This bill needs to be substantially strengthened to actually deal with the abuses that we've seen.

The health care system is at risk. It needs protection. This bill needs to go much further.