City
Morning Brew: eHealth Spending, Phone Numbers Dwindling, Keanu Reeves Jr.
Photo: "Huh?" by Air33, member of the blogTO Flickr pool.
What's happening in the GTA (and sometimes beyond):
Ontario is looking to leap into the 21st century by bringing our health records into the electronic age. But eHealth, the government-run agency that has been given this task, is spending money like there's no tomorrow. Check out the consulting fees, the bonuses, and the expenses. It's ludicrous (and has people calling for resignations).
CityNews is everywhere. On one hand, they got the skinny on what could have been a really bad situation. A woman is lucky to be alive (let alone uninjured) after a huge tree fell onto her car as she drove by in the St. Clair and Mt. Pleasant area. The city says the tree was rotting, and simply came down. In less important news, someone put soap in the Flatiron Building fountain.
Blame it on the ubiquitous nature of mobile phones (even amongst teens and tweens!). We're running out of phone numbers. That's right... Toronto could very soon end up being Canada's first region with three area codes.
A 16-year old with Asperger's Syndrome, visiting Toronto for the first time, and who was missing since he was kicked out of a concert the Sound Academy was found - apparently drowned, in Lake Ontario. Now the club's security practices are being questioned. My sense is that this is just one of those really unfortunate freak accidents.
A guilty verdict for manslaughter was handed out in the case of the high school rugby incident that resulted in a player's death. What does this mean for school sports? We'll see. Hopefully the news affects only those with wild, uncontrollable, violent streaks and has little other impact on which sports are played and how.
Heads up, celebrity chasers! Keanu Reeves Jr. may be on the GO bus from Barrie. Or not. They may look at DNA, but I say they speed things up and simply judge his reaction to a bomb threat on a bus.
Discussion
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I've noticed a lot of other news sites saying the teen had autism. And while aspergers is a sort of autism-lite, there are some pretty big differences. An autistic teen may not be able to fend for themselves alone in an unfamiliar city, a teen with aspergers probably would.
Physically attacking someone is no 'accident'. The result of death may be an accident or not the intended outcome, but the act of the violence is a premeditated decision. The consequences determined by law and our society don't suddenly cease to exist just before you've dawned a sports uniform.
"the GTA could very soon end up being Canada's first region with three area codes"
The GTA already has eight area codes: 416, 905, 647, 289, 705, 619, 226 and 519.
Even if your definition of "GTA" is smaller, that still leaves four: 416 and 647 in Metro Toronto and 905 and 289 in Mississauga and elsewhere.
And it's "Asperger's" not "Asbergers".
Secondly how is this not murder in the 2nd degree? Did he think driving a man's head into the ground wouldn't kill him?
There's probably some minor financial weaselry happening here, untendered contracts to communications companies are always a red flag (see Sponsorship Scandal) but there's a lot of hype being injected in among the reality of what is actually a pretty boring story about someone who bent the procurement rules.
Also, the CEO of eHealth earning so much when it's a non-commercial organization is completely insane. People went nuts over Hydro's salaries when they were supposed to be privatized and listed on the TSX. eHealth is just a respository for bureaucrats and there's absolutely no justification for paying the CEO anywhere near as much money.
The actual amount spent on consulting is no big deal, $300 is pretty cheap. But violating procedures is unforgivable.
On the rugby manslaughter - since it was heat of the moment and supposedly a fight, the most you can get is manslaughter. It's legitimate for it to have been treated as a criminal matter, complete difference in kind of violence from normal parameters. Best example is the charges in the NHL for clubbing a guy over the head with a stick - a fight is within the realm of expectation, but wildly swinging a stick like a sword isn't. Rugby you'll get abused (like the Defense Minister) and in fist fights, but WWE moves are criminal.
it doesn't surprise me that security simply kicked the guy out...Sound Academy probably contracts out to Northwest Protection Services (which handles security at many local venues) and the people they hire aren't the brightest...when all you need is to pay $80 for a security licence and you get paid minimum wage (which most guards in that company get paid), you probably couldn't care less about your job...much less about the people you're kicking out.
Mostly right, but you'd never get that from the media coverage, it's all outrage over the $300.
Government procurement rules exist for three reasons 1) to prevent the opportunity for corruption 2) to assure fairness in that government business is available to anyone, not just insiders in the know and 3) to take advantage of market competitiveness to keep costs under control.
The reality is the government tendering process is expensive, it's expensive to the government and it's expensive to the would be vendors but it's worth the expense mainly because of reason 1 above. In point of fact from where I sit as a former civil servant now on the vendor side it does a reasonably poor job of reason 2 and 3. My understanding here is that what they basically did was sole source contracts to vendors who had previously won open tenders for similar work under the same rates and conditions for shortish periods of time. A bad idea, yes, a reason to question the judgement of the chairperson, absolutely as part of the regular evaluation of her performance but criminal fraud? no I don't see that this rises to the level of criminal fraud.
It's not an exaggeration to say that many of the *multiple* issues brought to light to date do not pass the smell test. It's alleged that 5 people were fired for objecting to the tendering process. The Courtyard Group has been in like Flynn for years along University Ave - with little progress to show for it except reams of billing. Many of the 'services' provided by these consultants could have been done by regular staff at much lower cost.
And Kramer gets a $114k bonus for leaving one Alan Hudson organization to parachute into the next one?
To me it's like listening to Mulroney warble about the payments from Schreiber: umm, sure, maybe there's some kind of twisted, justifiable, explanation underneath it all, but the appearance of impropriety is unmistakeable. You can rationalize an item here, an item there, I'm happy to give the benefit of the doubt on any given item to our civil service, but overall when you look at the scope of the contracts being repeatedly tendered without the correct process -- as well as who they're being awarded to -- it starts to suggest a pattern of unacceptable behaviors.
I feel sorry for Caplan, he inherited this mess from Smitherman.