The Ontario government has cleaned house at the province's air ambulance service, dismissing the entire board of directors amid a growing scandal over accountability and oversight that also extends to patient care.
A government official revealed Wednesday evening that the Finance Ministry has assigned 28 members of its forensic audit team to work on untangling a web of private, for-profit companies created by insiders of Ornge, the entity responsible for co-ordinating all aspects of the province's air ambulance services.
The team includes 15 forensic auditors who are working out of Ornge's offices – a number that has climbed from 10 since the beginning of January. Some of the auditors were working late into Wednesday evening, along with the senior bureaucrat the government parachuted into Ornge.
At 7:30 p.m., interim chief executive officer Ron McKerlie stepped out of the main doors of Ornge's headquarters in Mississauga to grab some dinner that his wife brought to him.
“It's been a long day ... And this suit I'm wearing, I bought it with my own money. Don't mind me,” Mr. McKerlie told a Globe and Mail reporter before ducking back inside.
Ornge is just the latest problem involving free-wheeling spending on the McGuinty government's watch. But Ornge is breeding a heightened sense of urgency around Queen's Park because it threatens to eclipse spending scandals involving eHealth and the province's lottery corporation back in 2009 because the stakes are so much higher.
Ornge is responsible for performing live-saving CPR on patients and ferrying them from accident scenes to a hospital. But it is also facing questions about whether patient care was compromised. The Globe has reported that the Health Ministry's Emergency Health Services Branch is investigating 13 cases, including three deaths. Most of these incidents relate to complaints about either response times or the adequacy of Ornge's new helicopter fleet.
Health Minister Deb Matthews is on the defensive over Ornge. Ms. Matthews was aware that Ornge planned to create new business ventures that would make money by trading on the expertise of the taxpayer-funded air ambulance service. Ornge was to receive just 3 per cent of the revenue from these businesses, and the new ventures would pocket the balance, according to a copy of a Stakeholder Briefing dated Jan. 19, 2011 and signed by chairman Rainer Beltzner.
“We were aware of the restructuring,” she told reporters on Wednesday. “But we're not talking about restructuring here. We're talking about abuse of taxpayer dollars. That's the problem.”
Ms. Matthews moved swiftly on Wednesday to attempt to douse the controversy. Mr. Beltzner, along with the three other directors, were asked to step down. Mining executive Ian Delaney was appointed chairman of a new seven-member board.
The new board also includes Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre chief executive officer Barry McLellan and Charles Harnick, a former solicitor general in the Harris government.
Progressive Conservative MPP Frank Klees has been raising questions about Ornge for more than a year and is calling for a coroner's inquiry to investigate every emergency call Ornge was involved in where the patient died.
Mr. Klees said the new board is “a step in the right direction. ... These are competent people.”
The ouster of the board came one day after Mr. McKerlie terminated 18 administrative jobs at head office. As well, Maria Renzella, executive vice-president of corporate services, has gone on medical leave, according to sources. She is the second top executive to do so – Ornge founder and chief executive officer Chris Mazza went on “indefinite” medical leave in December.
Several employees, who wanted to remain anonymous, said details were scant and rumours were flying around the office. One woman, who worked in accounting, said staff were expecting more pink slips to be handed out over the coming weeks, while another male employee in patient care said many were “happy with the shake-up” in management. “We just want to get back to the positive work we do, and really have nothing to do with this mess.”
Commentary by the Ottawa Mens Centre
The alarm bells in the Ontario Government were ringing virtually days after
ORNGE started operating.
The misuse of Ontario assets was habitual and obvious. Just ask anyone who was
involved with ORNGE back in the early days.
The warning signs.
Expensive Helicopters were frequently used when fixed wing air ambulances were
more suitable, could have done the trip much quicker at far lower cost.
Expensive Helicopters were often used from a base far removed from the area. It
was not uncommon for a helicopter from southern Ontario to end up in Northern
Ontario while there were available helicopters sitting on the ground in Sudbury.
It makes you wonder how many people wrote to the Ontario Minister for health
since the inception of ORNGE and provided examples of facts that should have
triggered investigations years ago.
It all points to a deliberate blindness until the matter finally hit the
headlines which is when the government went into damage control.
Now the government is just as likely to scrap ORNGE and revert back to the
private contractors that existed and operated very efficiently prior to ORNGE.
All of which is tragic because a well run government organization with
appropriate safeguards had the potential of saving the province overhead costs.
The problem is, such an organization is ripe for the corrupt plundering and
abuse.
www.OttawaMensCentre.com