• Resources
  • Blog
  • Journalists
  • Webcasts
  • Data Privacy
  • Français
  • my CNW 
    • Login
    • Register
  • Client Login 
    • Online Member Centre
    • Next Gen Communications Cloud
    • Cision Communications Cloud®
  • Sign Up
  • Send a Release
Cision Canada
  • News
  • Products
  • Contact
When typing in this field, a list of search results will appear and be automatically updated as you type.

Searching for your content...

No results found. Please change your search terms and try again.
Advanced Search
  • News in Focus
      • Browse News Releases

      • All News Releases
      • All Public Company
      • News Releases Overview

      • Multimedia Gallery

      • All Multimedia
      • All Photos
      • All Videos
      • Multimedia Gallery Overview

      • Trending Topics

      • All Trending Topics
  • Business
      • Auto & Transportation

      • All Automotive & Transportation
      • Aerospace, Defense
      • Air Freight
      • Airlines & Aviation
      • Automotive
      • Maritime & Shipbuilding
      • Railroads and Intermodal Transportation
      • Supply Chain/Logistics
      • Transportation, Trucking & Railroad
      • Travel
      • Trucking and Road Transportation
      • Auto & Transportation Overview

      • View All Auto & Transportation

      • Business Technology

      • All Business Technology
      • Blockchain
      • Broadcast Tech
      • Computer & Electronics
      • Computer Hardware
      • Computer Software
      • Data Analytics
      • Electronic Commerce
      • Electronic Components
      • Electronic Design Automation
      • Financial Technology
      • High Tech Security
      • Internet Technology
      • Nanotechnology
      • Networks
      • Peripherals
      • Semiconductors
      • Business Technology Overview

      • View All Business Technology

      • Entertain­ment & Media

      • All Entertain­ment & Media
      • Advertising
      • Art
      • Books
      • Entertainment
      • Film and Motion Picture
      • Magazines
      • Music
      • Publishing & Information Services
      • Radio & Podcast
      • Television
      • Entertain­ment & Media Overview

      • View All Entertain­ment & Media

      • Financial Services & Investing

      • All Financial Services & Investing
      • Accounting News & Issues
      • Acquisitions, Mergers and Takeovers
      • Banking & Financial Services
      • Bankruptcy
      • Bond & Stock Ratings
      • Conference Call Announcements
      • Contracts
      • Cryptocurrency
      • Dividends
      • Earnings
      • Earnings Forecasts & Projections
      • Financing Agreements
      • Insurance
      • Investments Opinions
      • Joint Ventures
      • Mutual Funds
      • Private Placement
      • Real Estate
      • Restructuring & Recapitalization
      • Sales Reports
      • Shareholder Activism
      • Shareholder Meetings
      • Stock Offering
      • Stock Split
      • Venture Capital
      • Financial Services & Investing Overview

      • View All Financial Services & Investing

      • General Business

      • All General Business
      • Awards
      • Commercial Real Estate
      • Corporate Expansion
      • Earnings
      • Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG)
      • Human Resource & Workforce Management
      • Licensing
      • New Products & Services
      • Obituaries
      • Outsourcing Businesses
      • Personnel Announcements
      • Real Estate Transactions
      • Residential Real Estate
      • Small Business Services
      • Socially Responsible Investing
      • Surveys, Polls and Research
      • Trade Show News
      • General Business Overview

      • View All General Business

  • Science & Tech
      • Consumer Technology

      • All Consumer Technology
      • Artificial Intelligence
      • Blockchain
      • Cloud Computing/Internet of Things
      • Computer Electronics
      • Computer Hardware
      • Computer Software
      • Consumer Electronics
      • Cryptocurrency
      • Data Analytics
      • Electronic Commerce
      • Electronic Gaming
      • Financial Technology
      • Mobile Entertainment
      • Multimedia & Internet
      • Peripherals
      • Social Media
      • STEM (Science, Tech, Engineering, Math)
      • Supply Chain/Logistics
      • Wireless Communications
      • Consumer Technology Overview

      • View All Consumer Technology

      • Energy & Natural Resources

      • All Energy
      • Alternative Energies
      • Chemical
      • Electrical Utilities
      • Gas
      • General Manufacturing
      • Mining
      • Mining & Metals
      • Oil & Energy
      • Oil and Gas Discoveries
      • Utilities
      • Water Utilities
      • Energy & Natural Resources Overview

      • View All Energy & Natural Resources

      • Environ­ment

      • All Environ­ment
      • Conservation & Recycling
      • Environmental Issues
      • Environmental Policy
      • Environmental Products & Services
      • Green Technology
      • Natural Disasters
      • Environ­ment Overview

      • View All Environ­ment

      • Heavy Industry & Manufacturing

      • All Heavy Industry & Manufacturing
      • Aerospace & Defense
      • Agriculture
      • Chemical
      • Construction & Building
      • General Manufacturing
      • HVAC (Heating, Ventilation and Air-Conditioning)
      • Machinery
      • Machine Tools, Metalworking and Metallurgy
      • Mining
      • Mining & Metals
      • Paper, Forest Products & Containers
      • Precious Metals
      • Textiles
      • Tobacco
      • Heavy Industry & Manufacturing Overview

      • View All Heavy Industry & Manufacturing

      • Telecomm­unications

      • All Telecomm­unications
      • Carriers and Services
      • Mobile Entertainment
      • Networks
      • Peripherals
      • Telecommunications Equipment
      • Telecommunications Industry
      • VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol)
      • Wireless Communications
      • Telecomm­unications Overview

      • View All Telecomm­unications

  • Lifestyle & Health
      • Consumer Products & Retail

      • All Consumer Products & Retail
      • Animals & Pets
      • Beers, Wines and Spirits
      • Beverages
      • Bridal Services
      • Cannabis
      • Cosmetics and Personal Care
      • Fashion
      • Food & Beverages
      • Furniture and Furnishings
      • Home Improvement
      • Household, Consumer & Cosmetics
      • Household Products
      • Jewelry
      • Non-Alcoholic Beverages
      • Office Products
      • Organic Food
      • Product Recalls
      • Restaurants
      • Retail
      • Supermarkets
      • Toys
      • Consumer Products & Retail Overview

      • View All Consumer Products & Retail

      • Entertain­ment & Media

      • All Entertain­ment & Media
      • Advertising
      • Art
      • Books
      • Entertainment
      • Film and Motion Picture
      • Magazines
      • Music
      • Publishing & Information Services
      • Radio & Podcast
      • Television
      • Entertain­ment & Media Overview

      • View All Entertain­ment & Media

      • Health

      • All Health
      • Biometrics
      • Biotechnology
      • Clinical Trials & Medical Discoveries
      • Dentistry
      • FDA Approval
      • Fitness/Wellness
      • Health Care & Hospitals
      • Health Insurance
      • Infection Control
      • International Medical Approval
      • Medical Equipment
      • Medical Pharmaceuticals
      • Mental Health
      • Pharmaceuticals
      • Supplementary Medicine
      • Health Overview

      • View All Health

      • Sports

      • All Sports
      • General Sports
      • Outdoors, Camping & Hiking
      • Sporting Events
      • Sports Equipment & Accessories
      • Sports Overview

      • View All Sports

      • Travel

      • All Travel
      • Amusement Parks and Tourist Attractions
      • Gambling & Casinos
      • Hotels and Resorts
      • Leisure & Tourism
      • Outdoors, Camping & Hiking
      • Passenger Aviation
      • Travel Industry
      • Travel Overview

      • View All Travel

  • Policy & Public Interest
      • Policy & Public Interest

      • All Policy & Public Interest
      • Advocacy Group Opinion
      • Animal Welfare
      • Canadian Federal Government
      • Canadian Municipal Government
      • Canadian Provincial Government
      • Corporate Social Responsibility
      • Domestic Policy
      • Economic News, Trends, Analysis
      • Education
      • Environmental
      • European Government
      • FDA Approval
      • Federal and State Legislation
      • Federal Executive Branch & Agency
      • Foreign Policy & International Affairs
      • Homeland Security
      • Labor & Union
      • Legal Issues
      • Natural Disasters
      • Not For Profit
      • Patent Law
      • Public Safety
      • Trade Policy
      • Policy & Public Interest Overview

      • View All Policy & Public Interest

  • People & Culture
      • People & Culture

      • All People & Culture
      • Aboriginal, First Nations & Native American
      • African American
      • Asian American
      • Children
      • Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
      • Hispanic
      • Lesbian, Gay & Bisexual
      • Men's Interest
      • People with Disabilities
      • Religion
      • Senior Citizens
      • Veterans
      • Women
      • People & Culture Overview

      • View All People & Culture

  • Advanced Search
  • Overview
  • Cision Communications Cloud®
  • Monitoring
  • Distribution
  • Multimedia
  • Guaranteed Paid Placement
  • Analytics
  • IR
  • Become a Client
  • Request a Demo
  • Editorial Bureaus
  • Partnerships
  • General Enquiries
  • Media
  • Worldwide Offices
  • Cision Canada
  • Send a Release
  • FR
    • Phone

    • 877-269-7890 from 8 AM - 10 PM ET

    • ALL CONTACT INFO
    • Contact Cision

      877-269-7890
      from 8 AM - 10 PM ET

  • Send a Release
  • Sign Up
  • Resources
  • Blog
  • Journalists
  • Webcasts
  • GDPR
  • News in Focus
    • Browse All News
    • Multimedia Gallery
    • Trending Topics
  • Business
    • Auto & Transportation
    • Business Technology
    • Entertain­ment & Media
    • Financial Services & Investing
    • General Business
  • Science & Tech
    • Consumer Technology
    • Energy & Natural Resources
    • Environ­ment
    • Heavy Industry & Manufacturing
    • Telecomm­unications
  • Lifestyle & Health
    • Consumer Products & Retail
    • Entertain­ment & Media
    • Health
    • Sports
    • Travel
  • Policy & Public Interest
    • Policy & Public Interest
  • People & Culture
    • People & Culture
  • Send a Release
  • Sign Up
  • Resources
  • Blog
  • Journalists
  • Webcasts
  • GDPR
  • Overview
  • Cision Communications Cloud®
  • Monitoring
  • Distribution
  • Multimedia
  • Guaranteed Paid Placement
  • Analytics
  • IR
  • Send a Release
  • Sign Up
  • Resources
  • Blog
  • Journalists
  • Webcasts
  • GDPR
  • Become a Client
  • Request a Demo
  • Editorial Bureaus
  • Partnerships
  • General Enquiries
  • Media
  • Worldwide Offices
  • Send a Release
  • Sign Up
  • Resources
  • Blog
  • Journalists
  • Webcasts
  • GDPR

Auditor General's 2017 Annual Report Identifies Need for Better Government Planning to Act on Known Issues


News provided by

Office of the Auditor General of Ontario

Dec 06, 2017, 12:44 ET

Share this article

Share this article


TORONTO, Dec. 6, 2017 /CNW/ - The 2017 Annual Report of the Auditor General of Ontario was made public today after it was tabled in the Ontario Legislature.

The Report, presented in two volumes, contains results of value-for-money audits of provincial spending in agriculture, emergency management, energy, health care, education, services for newcomers, government-owned real estate, and social housing.

"A theme that was central to almost all of our audits this year was the need for government to plan better—and sometimes to just have a plan in the first place," Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk said at the release of her Report. "Good planning supports timely and informed decision-making and oversight and can help avoid many of the issues we identified this year."

Volume 1 of the Report contains 14 value-for-money audits. The findings of this year's Report include:

  • The Independent Electricity System Operator has not implemented some important recommendations made by the Ontario Energy Board's Market Surveillance Panel over the last 15 years that could have saved Ontarians millions of dollars on their electricity bills. As well, increasing amounts of the global adjustment charge is shifting from large industrial ratepayers to residential and small-business ratepayers: In January 2011, all ratepayers were paying about 7 cents per kilowatt/hour (cents/kWh), but as of June 2017, residential and small-business customers were paying 12 cents/kWh and large industrial customers 6 cents/kWh.
  • The limited capacity for stem cell transplants in Ontario, an issue first identified in 2009, has forced the Province to send patients to the United States for the procedure, at an average cost of $660,000 (Cdn)—almost five times the $128,000 average cost in Ontario. As well, the majority of cancer drugs now being developed are oral drugs that can be taken at home, but the full cost of cancer drugs is not covered for all Ontarians unless the drugs are administered in a hospital.
  • Since 1999, the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care has made no major updates to the list of prices that it pays private-sector community labs to perform tests, even though there have been many technological advances over the years that have reduced lab-testing costs. It plans to finally implement a new price list in 2017/18. If this new price list had been in effect in 2015/16, the Ministry would have paid about $39 million less that year alone.
  • Ontario's 75 Community Health Centres (CHCs) provide health-care services to vulnerable populations, but the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care and Ontario's 14 Local Health Integration Networks do not have sufficient meaningful information about CHC operations to know whether CHCs are cost-effectively serving their intended population.
  • Generic drug prices in Ontario have dropped significantly in the last 10 years, but the Province still pays more than foreign countries—in 2015/16, for example, the audit found Ontario paid roughly $100 million (or about 70%) more for the same drugs as New Zealand. The audit compared a sample of common generic drugs used in both community and hospital settings, and found that the Ministry paid $271 million (or about 85%) more than some Ontario hospitals.
  • The Province does not know whether Ontario's 36 public health units are making progress in the fight against preventable chronic diseases. Ontario has no overarching chronic disease prevention strategy to guide overall program planning and development.
  • The Ministry of Education gives school boards total discretion in how they spend the non-restricted funding they receive, even when some of the funding is provided for specific provincial education priorities. The Ministry also does not require boards to report how the funding for these priorities is used.
  • School Boards experienced added financial pressures because of the increase in sick days by their employees. In three of the four school boards visited for the audit, salary costs paid to school board employees while they were off sick increased by 32% from $32.3 million in 2011/12 to $42.7 million in the 2015/16 school year. Average sick days taken during this period ranged from 8.4 days to 13.4 days.
  • The Assessment Review Board, which hears appeals from property owners mainly about residential and non-residential property assessments by the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation, has a backlog as of March 2017 of about 16,600 unresolved appeals. The audit also highlighted concerns with the fact that 80% of decisions were oral, as opposed to written, and as such are not subject to peer review.
  • One major concern expressed by some municipalities was that the Ontario Municipal Board may have exceeded its jurisdiction by overturning sections of the municipalities' Official Plans. Several municipalities also told us that they spent millions of taxpayer dollars to defend their Official Plans, which had been approved by their elected councils and the Province. Legislation is pending to change the name of the Municipal Board to the Local Planning Appeal Tribunal and make it more affordable and accessible to Ontarians.
  • Oversight of emergency management in Ontario is the responsibility of the Cabinet Committee on Emergency Management—which has not met for several years. The current provincial emergency management program has not considered emergencies that occurred after 2009, or the latest information on the effects of climate change, cyberattacks and terrorism.
  • Only one of Ontario's four main farm-support programs, the Production Insurance Program, sufficiently helps farmers manage losses. However, the $100-million-a-year Ontario Risk Management Program often pays farmers with little regard to individual need; only half of farmers who received payments between 2011 and 2015 actually reported either a loss or a drop in income in the year they received the payment.
  • There has been limited co-ordination between the Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration and the federal government to avoid duplication of services for newcomers. In 2016/17, about $30 million in Ontario-funded newcomer services were provided to individuals also eligible for similar services funded by the federal government, which is the primary funder of settlement services in Ontario.
  • Ontario has the largest social-housing wait list in the country, with 185,000 households, representing about 481,000 people, on the list—or 3.4% of the province's total population. That compares with 168,000 households actually in social housing. Construction of new affordable housing slowed considerably after 1996, and the number of affordable units is dropping as contracts with housing providers begin to expire.
  • Ontario spent almost $19 million in 2016/17 to operate and maintain 812 vacant buildings across the province. About 600 of the buildings had been vacant for an average of almost eight years.

Volume 1 also has chapters on the following:

  • The public accounts of the Province, which outlines the detail behind Lysyk's decision to issue a "qualified" opinion on the consolidated financial statements of the Province of Ontario for 2016/17 regarding the impact of its accounting methods on the annual deficit and highlights that the Province's consolidated financial statements are becoming increasingly unreliable.
  • Accountability in the government and the broader public sector that focuses this year on the quality of reporting through annual reports. We found that only two of the 30 government and broader-public-sector organizations we examined met all the mandated provincial criteria in their 2015/16 annual reports.
  • The Auditor General's review of government advertising. Government spending on advertising is at a 10‑year high. The 2016/17 fiscal year was the first full year that a series of 2015 amendments to the Act were in effect that weakened the Office's authority to ensure that public money is not spent on advertising that could give the government a partisan edge.

The audit also highlights a number of areas where things are working well. For example:

  • most cancer patients are generally receiving treatment in a reliable manner;
  • accurate and timely lab results are being delivered to health-care professionals;
  • the Ontario Public Drug Programs have provided timely access for eligible recipients when their prescribed drugs are listed on the Formulary; and
  • more attention is now being given to finding ways to improve emergency management in Ontario and updating the Provincial Nuclear Emergency Response Plan.

Volume 2 contains follow-up reports on the recommendations we made in our audits in 2015. Government ministries and agencies made some progress toward implementing 71% of the actions contained in those recommendations. Also, new this year, in an expanded effort to track the status of our past recommendations, we also revisited recommendations made in our annual reports of 2012, 2013 and 2014. Volume 2 also contains follow-ups on the seven reports issued by the all-party Standing Committee of Public Accounts.

Visit www.auditor.on.ca to read the Report.

SOURCE Office of the Auditor General of Ontario

For further information: Bonnie Lysyk, Auditor General, (416) 327-1326

Related Links

www.auditor.on.ca

Modal title

Organization Profile

Office of the Auditor General of Ontario

    Also from this source

  • Ontario Bypassing People's Rights to Be Consulted on the Environment: Auditor General

  • Media Advisory - Auditor General of Ontario to release 2022 Environmental Bill of Rights report December 7

  • Annual Report Shows Need for Better Government Planning with Increased Transparency and Evidence-Based Decision-Making: Auditor General

Contact Cision

  • 877-269-7890
    from 8 AM - 10 PM ET

  • Become a Client
  • Request a Demo
  • Editorial Bureaus
  • Partnerships
  • General Enquiries
  • Media
  • Worldwide Offices

Products

  • Cision Communications Cloud®
  • Media Monitoring
  • Content Distribution
  • Multimedia Distribution
  • Measurement & Analytics
  • Investor Relations

About

  • About Cision Canada
  • About Cision
  • Media Partners
  • Careers
  • Accessibility Statement

My Services

  • All News Releases
  • Online Member Centre
  • Next Gen Communications Cloud
  • Cision Communications Cloud®
  • my CNW

Contact Cision

Products

About

My Services
  • All News Releases
  • Online Member Centre
  • Next Gen Communications Cloud
  • Cision Communications Cloud
  • my CNW
877-269-7890
from 8 AM - 10 PM ET
  • Terms of Use
  • Information Security Policy
  • Site Map
  • Cookie Settings
  • Accessibility Statement
Copyright © 2023 CNW Group Ltd. All Rights Reserved. A Cision company.