McGuinty tightens spending rules for arms-length agencies

National

Karen Howlett and Anna Mehler Paperny

In bid to end string of scandals, Premier extends public-service spending restrictions to every agency in the province, including the LCBO, Hydro One and Ontario Power Generation.

Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty is casting a wide net as he attempts to put an end to spending scandals that have dogged his government by ordering every agency in the province to adopt the public service’s rules for travel and entertainment.

Until now, more than half of the 615 agencies in Ontario were not included in a directive governing spending on meals, travel and hospitality, leaving them free to set their own rules. But in the wake of revelations of lavish spending on meals and booze at the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp., the government is putting every agency on notice that it must adhere to the public service rules imposing strict limits on wining and dining.

“They all have to comply,” said Sarbjit Kaur, a spokeswoman for Government Services Minister Harinder Takhar.

David Docherty, a professor of political science at Wilfrid Laurier University, said it would have been far more useful to have an all-party committee of MPPs review how government creates and manages its agencies.

It’s no easy task giving arms-length government agencies private-sector freedoms while keeping them on a public-sector leash, Prof. Docherty said.

“The problem is, from a governance perspective it’s not altogether clear who is responsible,” he said. “The government sees it has a problem on its hands reining in these arms-length agencies, and that, I think, signals a larger problem.”

Ontario has 282 classified agencies, boards and commissions – those deemed to need more oversight and which already follow the public service expense rules. Another 333 agencies are non-classified and operate with greater autonomy.

The province’s Integrity Commissioner and her staff of nine will take on the added responsibility of approving the expenses of 21 of the largest entities and their 44,000 employees, making them subject to the same oversight as cabinet ministers and their staff. It’s not clear what form the scrutiny will take.

Many of the province’s best-known agencies are among the 21, such as Ontario Power Generation, the largest with 12,000 employees, the lottery corporation, the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, Hydro One and eHealth Ontario.

However, a review by The Globe and Mail shows that several large agencies are not included, such as the Municipal Property Assessment Corp., the Ontario Securities Commission and the Niagara Parks Commission.

A financial services executive who asked not to be named questioned why the securities commission operates with greater autonomy than the Financial Services Commission of Ontario – even though both regulate the province’s financial markets. The OSC, like many other agencies on the list of 21, is not financed by taxpayers; its revenue comes from fees collected from the industry.

Jane Almeida, a spokeswoman for Mr. McGuinty, would not say how the 21 names were compiled. She said in an e-mail response that the securities commission was excluded because it has a “significant enforcement component to its mandate.

“It’s also in the unique position of being an agency we’ve long advocated eliminating and replacing with one national securities regulator.”

Mr. McGuinty warned last week there would be consequences for those who treat these entities like private corporations.

“If you doubt our commitment, take a look at the example … we are making of OLG,” he said, after firing the lottery corporation’s chief executive officer with cause and having the entire board resign.

Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak said the spending scandals at the lottery corporation and eHealth call into question the McGuinty government’s stewardship over the province’s largest institutions after six years in office.

“What we saw at eHealth and OLG is definitely reflecting a culture of entitlement that has set in quite deep,” he said. “If a Liberal cabinet minister can’t ensure that the lunch money has been spent wisely, what confidence can Ontario taxpayers have in their ability to oversee the spending on hospitals, roads and schools?”

Local swimming holes have disappeared

Posted By AL OLEKSUIK

There was a time in this fair land when ‘the old swimming hole’ was the summertime place of fun. All across Niagara Falls there were those special places to hang out with your friends and cool off during the hot summer days.

Let’s take a brief journey down memory lane.

The Cyanamid swimming pool is a contender for the No. 1 ‘old swimming hole.’ It was created in the mid-1940s largely due to the vision and generosity of then plant manager, George Emmerson Cox and the Cyanamid Company.

The 64-metre by 32-metre pool was filled from the nearby hydro canal with nearly two million litres of water per hour. Anyone who swam there remembers the current in the pool as the waters moved from one end to the other before entering the plant. This was an ultimate luxury swimming hole with change rooms, picnic tables, stone fireplaces, an on-duty nurse and lifeguards. Countless local children learned to swim here and social activities such as volleyball and horseshoes added to the fun atmosphere.

Although artificial, it clearly was one of the coolest places to be during the summer months, right up until its final season in 1971.

The swimming areas in Dufferin Islands were another cooling spot. They were first established in 1907. The swimming areas, as well as the islands themselves, were man-made. A joint agreement between the Ontario Power Company and the Niagara Parks Commission resulted in this unique swimming and picnicking spot being created. Cascading waterfalls and shallow flowing waters attracted locals and tourists alike to this free summer playground. Many a summer romance sprang up in this idyllic setting.

While most of the swimming areas were quite tame, some of you might remember the spot called ‘the current’ or ‘the pipe’. A pipe fed under the parkway from the water flowing into the Ontario Power Company head-works.

The water jetted out under considerable force and would give an adventurous swimmer a quick ride towards the rocks on the opposite shore. You could dive under the current and listen to it roar overhead.

Another Niagara Parks Commission- controlled swimming area was at Kingsbridge Park on the Welland River (Chippawa Creek) in Chippawa. Once again this was a man-made area in a park setting. The waters flowing out of the Niagara River and into the creek are quite fast. However, the beach area was located in a small bay and protected by a sandbar.

The waters within the immediate area of the beach were calm, sandy and safe for most swimmers. This, too, was a popular location for locals and tourists.

The very popularity of both of these locations, safety concerns and an economic downturn for the Parks Commission resulted in the swimming areas being removed.

To say the decision was unpopular with locals would be an understatement. Losing these two ’swimming holes’ was a serious community loss and it is a shame future generations will not have them. It is still hard to believe both these priceless resources were closed. Not everything needs to generate a profit to have a value.

Well, one spot nobody could close was the Welland River, or Chippawa Creek, or ‘the crick’ as Chippawanians call it.

The deep, fast flowing waters of today’s crick are a far cry from its early days. Once a shallow, slow-flowing waterway, it was dredged and had its flow reversed in order to feed the hydro canal and the Beck power plants.

While every bridge and dock was a perfect summer hangout, several were special. The town bridge, the railroad bridge, my grandmother’s dock (known simply as Oleksuik’s dock) and several others were hives of activity all summer long. The bravest of the brave were in the water by May and not out until October. Bridge tag and underwater tag would be played for hours. Jumping and diving from the different levels of the bridges a test of courage. Jumping from the old block on the town bridge or the top of a railroad car was the ultimate test, passed by only the bravest or most foolish depending on your perspective. There are as many stories from along this waterway as there are fish in the waters below.

Once again, the decisions to tear down the railroad bridge and to put up signs on the town bridge banning jumping have taken away something special we should not be losing. Of course there are risks and of course the big expensive boats need a place to go. I just don’t think the decision makers understand what is being lost and that it could be lost forever. There are some things -intangible things -we need to covet, to remember and to protect.

There are countless small ponds, creeks and streams throughout Niagara that have served as perfectly sufficient swimming holes.

Today, there are hundreds of backyard cement ponds. While they serve the purpose, they just don’t cut it as a “swimming hole.” If there aren’t fish, frogs, seaweed and other crawly things in the water it just isn’t right.

Niagara Falls: Canadian side overflows with kitsch kitsch

by Dennis Roddy, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

NIAGARA FALLS, Canada — Niagara Falls spills 750,000 gallons of water per second down a 167-foot drop in a roar that began when glaciers melted 10,000 years ago.

Tourists come by the millions, stare into the white mist, and marvel at one of the wonders of the world. Then they have wonders of their own: What to do next?

As Nick Ramunno, who oversees a hall full of wax rock stars there for the staring at, puts it: “You need something else besides the Falls. You can only look at the Falls so long.”

That’s when it’s time to climb Clifton Hill.

There is no compromising with Clifton Hill. Either you recoil in horror at the noise, lights, crowds, smells, outsize waffle cones and howling fright houses or you give yourself over to the Great Spirit of Kitsch that has pervaded since the days hotel owners shanghaied each other’s guests at the train station and shook them down for trips to the bottom of the Falls.

Consider the words of Chucky Prime Time, who is bellowing the virtues of Ripley’s Moving Theater, a lights-stereo-and-cinema attraction on the main drag of Tourist Land.

“It’s what’s going down. It’s the Vegas of Canada, Clifton Hill. That’s the only way to describe it,” he says. Then, after some prodding, he confesses that his last name isn’t Prime Time. It’s Booth. And in real life he’s a college student and spends his free hours as a volunteer youth coach, but in Niagara Falls, every kid who wants to can get a summer job being something else: a cross between a day laborer and a carnival barker.

The Vegas of Canada is a perfect inversion of all common assumptions. Canadians have been famously defined as polite, unarmed Americans with health insurance. Yet in this one corner of the world, stereotype has been turned on its head. The Canadians bellow, their signs all but jump off the buildings, commerce reigns supreme, and a people ordinarily famed as the guardians of every leaf on every tree have left it to the Americans across the river to maintain a sedate park where it is the birds, not a recorded Dracula, that are heard during a walk.

But Clifton Hill? There is kitsch beyond computation. On a two-day swing a visitor counted five wax museums, three commercially haunted houses, a village built of LEGO, three towers capable of satisfying anyone’s urge for vertigo, King Kong on one building and Frankenstein holding a giant Whopper on another, a two-headed lamb, three electric chairs, a pair of shrunken heads and a bowling alley with giant TV screens affixed above the pins and filled with distracted bowlers who couldn’t seem to figure out why their shots landed in the gutters.

One caveat, warns Tara O’Hara, a Canadian who had three hours to spare and stopped by Clifton Hill with her date: “I would say it’s the children-friendly Las Vegas of Canada.”

Making money at the Falls

Niagara Falls, Canada, has long been known as bridal suite to the world. It got that reputation in 1801 when Aaron Burr’s daughter Theodosia sauntered north for a honeymoon. Three years later, Jerome Bonaparte, youngest brother of Napoleon, carted his bride to the Falls for a wedding trip. Jerome went on to become a notorious philanderer, but the die was cast: couples began flocking here. Then they had children.

The trick was to make money out of the place.

That’s when Saul Davis, an entrepreneur of Homeric proportions, began his trade. It involved a unique combination of hospitality and hostage-taking.

Davis owned a hotel on Table Rock, a shelf that jutted over the Falls. He built a set of stairs down to the bottom of the Falls and it became his practice to gull visitors into donning oilskin coats and taking “free” trips down those stairs to see the Falls. Upon their return, he then charged them extortionate rates for the rental of the coats.

The battle between Davis and his nearest competitor, Thomas Barnett, isn’t traditional Chamber of Commerce fare. Barnett ran a small museum and had his own stairs to the Falls. Davis put up signs declaring Barnett’s stairs unsafe. Later, Davis sold tickets to his own stairs and told customers that the tickets also gave them admission to Barnett’s museum. Barnett would send angry ticket holders to the police. Eventually the feud developed into gunplay, and one of Barnett’s employees lay dead.

“It’s actually a great script for a movie,” said George Bailey, a local historian, photographer, author and one-time marketing director for the local parks commission. Known locally as “Mr. Niagara,” Mr. Bailey was transported here at the age of 4 when his father took a job piloting one of the Maid of the Mists tour boats that chugs to the edge of the Falls’ spray. He began his own work on Clifton Hill as a freelance photographer.

“Great spot to go and seek the ladies,” Mr. Bailey explained. “I used to have a camera with no film in it at the time and I’d take pictures of them. Of course, I never had any film, but I’d always get their addresses to find out where I could deliver it later.”

The carnival of Clifton Hill

It was the creation of the Parks Commission that cleaned up the area around the Falls and drove the commercial craziness up the hill.

Today, the legacy of Saul Davis and Thomas Barnett lives on Clifton Hill, though nobody’s taking hostages, the gunfire is confined to attractions such as the Criminal Hall of Fame Wax Museum and families are, by and large, highly entertained.

“A lot of people think negatively of the carnival side of things, but really that’s part of our history, it’s been there since the very beginning. Since the days they were bootlegging on the ice in the middle of the Niagara River,” said Nicholas Tritchew, director of interactive marketing for HOCO Entertainment and Resorts, the largest company on the Hill.

HOCO runs a city block of Clifton Hill, with a hotel, game arcade known as the Great Canadian Midway, the Movieland wax museum, and plays landlord to a host of eateries, a bowling alley and its newest attraction, the Sky Wheel. It’s a 175-foot-high Ferris wheel with 42 six-passenger gondolas, and it serves as something of a giant metaphor.

Tourists rise to view the timeless Falls below and, as they move on, are confronted with the Clifton Hill vista where the architecture fairly cries out “20-minutes-ago.”

For the frantic pace, locals seem to love Clifton Hill.

“When you live in Niagara Falls, you don’t have to travel all over the world because the world comes to you,” beamed Elisabeth Senese, who was shuttling tourists into the Sky Wheel gondolas.

She worries, though, about the rainbows. Rainbows are a huge issue in Niagara Falls. Mr. Bailey, the former marketing director for the parks, came to know every turn and bend along the river to the point that he could pinpoint the precise location where the water’s spray would create a rainbow visible from the roadway.

Once, driving Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and his family through the Falls on an official visit, Mr. Bailey picked up his cell phone and jokingly called in a rainbow.

“Would you please turn on the rainbow for Mr. Mubarak and his family,” he said. “And soon as I drove 20 feet — voila! The rainbow appeared.”

With high rises and towers jutting up along the fringes of the park, though, some locals now worry about the vista. Already, Marine Land has put up a massive tower that intrudes on the Falls profile.

What to make of a place that balances the natural glory of a waterfall with the determinedly unnatural agglomeration of fright houses and high rises?

Ms. Senese thinks it over for a moment.

“Consumed by our consumption?” she ventures.

Then she presses the button and a visitor rises 175 feet and sees past, present and, of course, the casino to his left.

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09214/987540-37.stm#ixzz0N8iCfF9Q

Craitor’s transparency bill clears second-reading

Niagara Falls Review

Bill aimed at open government sent to committee for study

If knowledge is power, opening the doors at public agencies would make Ontarians more powerful, says Niagara Falls MPP Kim Craitor.

The Liberal MPP’s private member’s bill passed second-reading at Queen’s Park, an important step on its way to becoming the law of Ontario.

“Democracy is well served when everybody has the same facts… A knowledgeable public is an engaged public,” Craitor said during Thursday’s debate on the bill he introduced in March.

If Bill 159, The Transparency in Public Matters Act,were passed into law, it would require a long list of public agencies to hold their meetings in public and establish financial penalties for individual board members who fail to do so. The bill suggests Ontario’s Information and Privacy Commissioner be empowered to investigate meetings where government boards don’t meet in public.

There are more than 400 provincial agencies that account for 80 per cent of provincial government spending. Ontarians should be entitled to scrutinize how those agencies operate, Craitor said.

Craitor said his interest in transparency in government began after he was elected in 2003 when people in Niagara Falls questioned the Ontario Lottery Gaming corporation’s decision to hire Falls Management Co., an American-led partnership, to manage the two casinos in his riding.

He also questioned why meetings of the Niagara Parks Commission, a provincial agency, were closed to the public.

“As an MPP, I had no right to even attend their board meetings,” Craitor said.

Second reading is the stage where a private member’s bill starts to take on some steam in the legislative process.

Having passed second reading, the transparency bill was referred to the standing committee on general government.

“That committee is accustomed to dealing with that kind of legislation,” Craitor said.

The first time Craitor attempted to get a similar bill passed, many of the agencies that would be affected, lobbied to be excluded. That hasn’t happened this time.

“We haven’t had one letter or one phone call. Maybe they’re prepared to make the jump,” Craitor said.

To become law, the transparency bill needs to pass another vote at third reading.

Conservative Ernie Hardeman, the MPP for Oxford, spoke in support of the bill, but said the provincial Liberal government will effectively kill it by ensuring it is not called back for third reading.

“I don’t believe this bill will ever see the light of day for third reading,” Hardeman said.

MPPs from all parties spoke in favour of the bill, including Hardeman, a former Conservative cabinet minister, and Toronto New Democrat Michael Prue, who spoke in favour of it.

clarocque@nfreview.com

Preserve our Parks – Letter to Minister of Tourism

October 2, 2008

The Honourable Monique Smith,

Minister of Tourism

9^th Floor, Hearst Block

900 Bay Street

Toronto, ON M7A 2E1

Dear Madam Minister:

Congratulations on your recent appointment to the Cabinet of Ontario. We wish to alert you to an urgent situation regarding the Niagara Parks Commission, given that a letter from former minister Peter Fonseca (M2008-12983) shows some misunderstanding.

While Minister Fonseca quoted the logistics of the Niagara Parks Commission Act, a process of which most Niagarans are fully aware, unfortunately he failed to address our specific questions and concerns. Mainly, the citizens of Niagara are very leery of the “rubberstamp” procedure of making NPC decisions law. NPC meetings are so secretive that the municipally appointed representatives are forced (as are all commissioners) to swear an oath of secrecy, thereby forbidding them to report back to their constituency on any NPC business.

We want to know who is “guarding the hen house.” As Mr. Fonseca stated, the NPC has the authority to develop its own bylaws, rules and orders. Don’t we all wish we were so loosely regulated! You know, Madam Minister, if you are too loose with the rules, it is only human nature to take advantage of them. So clandestine are the meetings, that our own M.P.P. Kim Craitor was refused permission to merely observe a meeting. To repeat ourselves, not being elected, the NPC answers to no one. This is so disconcerting and needs to be updated to current, more transparent times.

Could you please delve a little further into the situation and tell us:

1. Why would the majority of commissioners and all four key decisionmakers, the Chairman, Vice-Chairman, General Manager and Counsel, be from outlying towns and not from Niagara Falls, Fort Erie, or Niagara-on-the-Lake, as it appears these appointees are ‘paybacks’ for political favours with only a passing interest in what happens on NPC lands.

1. Why do some commissioners randomly serve one, two, or three year terms, while others seem to be there for life (25 years plus)?

1. Who was awarded the wine and phone contracts for the NPC and what relationship do these individuals have with specific commissioner(s)?

It is precisely the lack of transparency, openness and accountability that makes the Ontario citizens suspicious of leases such as the one recently signed with the “Maid of the Mist’” more than a year before the lease was due.

NPC operations have evolved to be a far cry from what the Ontario government intended through the NPC Act. It was not too long ago that the NPC enjoyed a large surplus, and now, after some unwise schemes and decisions, they are crying poor and maintain they are in a deficit position, hard pressed to ‘compete.’ Please tell us, however, why their mandate should become entrepreneurial in nature, competing with local business! Who of their ‘competition’ has the Falls on their premises? How can the Government of Ontario stand by supportively when NPC Chairman Jim Williams said in a May 30, 2008 meeting that the Parks Commission has “no ethical or legal obligations to Niagara Falls tourism or to the local business community.” This is an offense to the people of Niagara.

We recommend that the NPC Act be revised to ensure:

1. all NPC meetings are open to the public and press

2. all NPC contracts are awarded in an open, transparent and accountable process

3. the Commission return its focus to preserving and protecting the parklands surrounding the Falls, enhancing Ontario tourism rather than competing with tourism operators.

Please understand our complaint is not personal. Nor is it a request for the NPC to be micromanaged. It is, however, a legitimate concern of Ontario taxpayers and voters.

You and Premier McGuinty, the Ontario legislature and the Liberal Party, who ran on a policy of transparency, openness and accountability, must prove your commitment and revise the NPC Act.

Respectfully yours,

(Mrs.) Patricia Mangoff

Coordinator, Preserve Our Parks

cc: The Honourable Dalton McGuinty, Premier of Ontario

Kim Craitor, M.P.P., Niagara Falls

Lynn Morrison, Acting Integrity Commissioner of Ontario

The Chairman and Commissioners, Niagara Parks Commission

Corey Laroque, Niagara Falls Review

Paul Forsyth, Niagara This Week

Invitation Only, Why?

JULY 9

FORT ERIE HOLIDAY INN

7PM

On July 9th A meeting is being held at the Fort Erie Holiday Inn. The meeting is about the proposed development at Miller’s Creek Marina and Cairn’s Crescent.

Unfortunately it is by invitation only. Why? Who is invited? Why are the developers and the Town of Fort Erie so afraid of a open and Transparent meeting with the residents of Fort Erie? After all on May 29, 2006 City Council adobted

Resolution No. 26

Gorham-Lewis
THAT: The Municipal Council of the Town of Fort Erie hereby supports a public/private partnership for development of the Niagara Parks Marina provided there is a public, open and transparent process regarding any such development. (CARRIED)

The last public meeting with town officials was a very one sided affair. Little was said at the meeting about environment issues, possible increased utilities costs an the rerouting of the Niagara Parkway through Cairn’s Crescent.

Are the few invited guests that are going to attend the meeting on July 9th the ones that are in favor of the development?

Find out why you were not invited to this private meeting by showing up at the Fort Erie Holiday Inn on July 9th at 7 PM.

Miller Creek

Miller Creek is located on flat poorly drained, heavy clay soils in the north east section of Fort Erie. Significant fish species such as Yellow Perch, Rock Bass, Grass Pickerel, Pumpkinseed and Black Bullhead are found in the creek. This area is recognized as an IBP site and is the only site of wild Hibiscus in the Niagara Peninsula. This is also the location of the rare Kingnut Hickory tree. On the banks occur occasional specimens of Cardinal Flower, Wild Coffee, Buttonbush and Swamp Milkweed. All of these plants are uncommon or rare to the Niagara Peninsula. The creek is recognized in the Fort Erie Official Plan (1993) as a Environmentally Sensitive Area, unique Biological Area and a provincially significant fishery.

www.brocku.ca/epi/3v23page/miller.htm

A Few Pictures From The Town Hall Meeting

THANK YOU!

I would like to thank everyone that attended our Town Hall meeting June 12. It was a full house at the Black Creek Community Center. Residents and concerned citizens expressed their concerns about the proposed development.

Special thanks to our guest speakers:

Mr. Warren (Smokey) Thomas, President Ontario Public Service Employees Union.

Mr. Kim Craitor, M.P.P. Niagara Falls

Mr. Bill Rudd, President Ontario Public Service Employees Union Local #217 (Niagara Parks Commission), Bill is also President Niagara District Labour Council.

I would also like to thank the team that helped to bring this meeting together. Everyone did a great job.

Thanks also to Mr. Dick Wujek for all his help with getting the Community Center set up for us.

Craitor Says Yes

M.P.P. Kim Craitor has said he will attend the Town Hall meeting.

Other confirmed guests include Ontario Public Service Employees Union President Warren (Smokey) Thomas and Niagara District Labour Council President Bill Rudd.

Also invited are Fort Erie Mayor Doug Martin, M.P.P. Peter Kormos and Niagara Parks Commission Chairman Jim Williams.