CAS, Hydro One, OPG all come under fire for wasting millions

OTTAWA, ONTARIO - The ChildrenÂ’s Aid Society in Toronto is rife with spending abuses, the provinceÂ’s auditor general found recently.

The $1.24 billion provincewide CAS system needs tighter restrictions to prevent misspending like senior executives getting $59,000 SUVs at the Toronto agency - something Premier Dalton McGuinty said he intends to address.

“We have not been getting good value for our dollars in terms of the money we’ve been sending to the Children’s Aid Society,” said McGuinty.

“That... $1 billion is there to support services for children. It’s not to ensure that people who are employed through the Children’s Aid Society enjoy a comfortable ride to and from the workplace,” he said.

In his annual report to the Legislature unveiled this afternoon at QueenÂ’s Park, Auditor General Jim McCarter also found the Liberal governmentÂ’s claims on lower medical wait times are inaccurate.

Equally troubling, there is widespread potential for fraud in the health care system with 300,000 more OHIP cards in circulation than there are citizens and hundreds of unlicensed doctors being paid for service. Dead doctors have also been paid.

As well, McCarter reported that a number of OntarioÂ’s public sector workers and managers overseeing expense accounts are unable to account for millions in charges on taxpayer-funded credit cards.

“I’d have to say that we noticed examples across all broader public sector areas that we looked at,” McCarter said after tabling his annual report.

“The number of questionable examples that we noted across the system were certainly of concern this year... we have a lot of examples in here of what we would call really questionable expenditures.”

Staff at Hydro One, the massive transmission utility, purchased $127 million worth of goods and services using corporate charge cards, but McCarterÂ’s annual report found few credit card slips or paperwork to justify those charges.

One senior executive at Hydro One had his secretary charge $50,000 to her charge card, even though most of the items purchased were for his use, while other staff wrote cheques on their charge card accounts totalling $41.2 million, McCarter found.

Staff at Ontario Power Generation failed to produce any receipts at all to support $6.5 million in expenditures. Managers at the government-owned power company also spent $300,000 for gifts, and $120,000 on gift certificates, for employees. The gifts included 40 leather jackets worth $500 each, given in recognition of five-year safety records.

“Contrary to corporate policy, none of these gifts were reported as taxable benefits,” McCarter noted.

The auditor general also examined four school boards across the province, and found one teacher spent $52,000 over two years on a purchasing card, including $4,000 spent during school breaks on DVDs, eyeglasses and Christmas lights.

Another teacher at the same board charged $11,000 over two years, including $2,800 on candies, chocolates and household supplies. Yet another employee had 12 purchasing card expenditures totalling $6,000, and no documentation to support the claims.

The auditor general won’t say which school board had the worst problems, but of the four he examined this year, Thames Valley District School Board in southwestern Ontario had 3,200 purchasing cards and racked up $5 million in charges — far more than the Durham District, Rainbow District and York Catholic school boards combined.

A litany of spending abuses at several ChildrenÂ’s Aid societies, which prompted an outcry last week after a draft report was leaked to the media, included the purchases of SUVs and expensive foreign trips to an all-inclusive Caribbean resort.

One staffer, with a society-provided vehicle, also received a $600 a month tax-free car allowance.

“Numerous expenditures of hundreds of dollars at a time were made at high-end restaurants, but the purpose and reasonableness of these could not be determined,” wrote McCarter.

“The society paid, on behalf of a senior executive, for an annual gym membership worth $2,000, along with quarterly personal trainer fees of $650. Several car washes were purchased at $150 each.”

OntarioÂ’s community colleges emerged fairly unscathed from the auditor generalÂ’s report, but McCarter did find several samples of gifts purchased for staff, including five gift cards worth $500 each given to staff at one college.

For the first time, the auditor general had the power to examine hospitals, and found they expose young children and even staff to high levels of radiation from CT and MRI scans. One CT examination of a childÂ’s abdomen is estimated to equal 4,000 x-rays, which is eight times the radiation an adult would be exposed to in the same setting.

“None of the hospitals that we visited had analyzed the number of CT examinations by patient or monitored radiation dosages absorbed by patients,” wrote McCarter.

The auditor general also found that Workplace Safety Insurance Board patients receive quicker access to MRI and CT diagnostic exams than everyone else because the board pays $1,200 up front.