TORONTO - The Liberal government should rescind bonuses and merit pay given to hundreds of bureaucrats at scandal-plagued eHealth Ontario, the province's opposition parties demanded Wednesday.
The electronic health records agency is giving staff 1.9 per cent merit raises and bonuses of 7.8 per cent, despite the government's two-year wage freeze for about one million public sector workers.
"How can Premier McGuinty justify handing out merit pay and bonuses of up to 10 per cent to the bureaucrats who brought us the billion-dollar eHealth boondoggle?" said Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak. "You should stand on your feet and say it's wrong and you're going to rescind these bonuses and merit pay to the eHealth bureaucrats that brought us this scandal."
David Caplan was forced to resign as health minister in 2009 after eHealth spent $1 billion trying to develop electronic health records but had very little to show for all the money.
Millions of dollars were given to consultants with ties to the Liberal government in the form of untendered contracts, while auditors uncovered widespread abuses of expense accounts at the agency.
Allowing eHealth to give out bonuses is just plain wrong, said Hudak.
"What planet do you call home now, that you think this makes any kind of sense whatsoever," he asked. "This is an extraordinary abuse of tax dollars."
The New Democrats also lashed out at the Liberals for freezing the wages of front-line health care workers like nurses while giving eHealth bureaucrats big raises.
"I guess the idea is everybody's supposed to be frozen, just some people are more frozen than others in this scheme," said NDP Leader Andrea Horwath. "It really shows what a joke this pay freeze idea was from Day 1."
Health Minister Deb Matthews said she was "disappointed" to hear eHealth was giving out bonuses and called top brass from the agency on the carpet Wednesday to demand they take another look at the plan.
"I spoke to the chair and the CEO of eHealth Ontario this morning and I asked them to review the decision in the context of our legislation and get back to me as quickly as possible," Matthews told reporters. "I want them to review it in context of the spirit of the legislation and the letter of the legislation."
However, the trouble for the Liberals' proposed wage freeze all along has been that they did not pass enabling legislation, so arbitrators have mostly ignored the freeze and kept awarding pay hikes. The Liberals' wage restraint rules have no force in law, so Matthews did not order eHealth to rescind the merit pay and bonuses because they are allowed under the rules.
"We need to take another look at this through the lens of the taxpayer," she said.
The opposition parties also accused the Liberals of signing another secret labour deal, this one with the Ontario Provincial Police, to get around the wage freeze.
Premier Dalton McGuinty said he was proud the OPP had accepted wage increases of "zero and zero," but it turns out many provincial police will get two per cent raise in the first year of the freeze and a four per cent pay hike in the second year.
McGuinty is misleading the public as he tries to buy labour votes ahead of the Oct. 6 election, charged the Tories.
"First there was the secret deal with (the Ontario Public Service Employees Union) for a one per cent bonus after election campaign, now we find out about a secret deal with the OPP, and I think they tried to keep this bonus pay for eHealth bureaucrats secret," said Hudak. "They should be honest with the public and not try to hide deals until after the election campaign."
