Wednesday, December 14, 2005

OTTAWA - Today, one day after the Ontario Liberal Government finally passed a law fixing provincial election dates and requiring immediate disclosure of some political donations, Democracy Watch called on the Ontario government to close the many other loopholes in the political donations system, and to expand its reform plan to address clear problems with government accountability in Ontario.

"Unfortunately, the Ontario Liberals have taken only a few, loophole-filled steps to democratize Ontario.  The government's overall accountability system remains very weak, as it is still legal to make secret political donations, to lobby in secret, to hold secret meetings, to lie to the public, and to act unethically because of weak ethics rules, and the key government accountability and corporate responsibility watchdogs are still chosen by the Premier," said Duff Conacher, Coordinator of Democracy Watch. "Much more needs to be done to ensure that everyone in the Ontario government, and in Ontario's corporations, is effectively required to act honestly, ethically, openly, efficiently and representatively, and can be easily held accountable."

Democracy Watch proposed the following 18 systemic changes that need to be made by Minister for Democratic Renewal Marie Bountrogianni and the Ontario Cabinet to make Ontario an effectively democratic society:

To empower citizens in their day-to-day relations with corporations and government:

• the government must help citizens band together and form broad-based, well-resourced, democratically structured citizen associations for every corporate sector and government department, which it can do at no cost using the method that has very successfully created such associations in several U.S. states (For details, view Democracy Watch's Citizen Association Campaign webpage);

• an honesty-in-politics law must be passed covering politicians, appointees and public servants and election campaigns, with complaints going to the Ethics Commissioner, and very high fines as the penalty for lying to Ontarians;
• ethics rules for politicians, appointees and public servants must be strengthened to match the much higher standard in the Canadian federal Cabinet's ethics rules in the areas of conflict-of-interest, gifts, hiring, and activities after leaving office;

• the access-to-information system must be strengthened by ensuring all government institutions are covered by the law, ensuring that all officials must create a record of all decisions and actions, and making all exemptions to disclosure subject to a proof-of-harm test and public interest override;
• the lobbying disclosure system must be strengthened by requiring all Ministers, junior ministers, and senior public officials to disclose who is lobbying them;
• whether or not Ministers and senior officials are required to disclose who is lobbying them, lobbyists (whether paid or unpaid) must be required to register even for gathering information, to disclose total spending on lobbying campaigns, and to disclose past work with the government and political parties;

• opposition party leaders must be given a veto over the appointment of all government accountability watchdogs (the Integrity Commissioner, the Information and Privacy Commissioner, the Auditor General, the Election Commissioner) after an independent, merit-based nomination process;
• all government accountability watchdogs must be given the power to penalize violators of laws they enforce with high fines, and to order a clean-up of any department's operations if they systemically increase violations;
• a law must be passed requiring all government institutions to use meaningful public consultation methods when making all significant decisions;

• disclosure must be required of all donations of money and in-kind services to candidates for political office, to candidates for leadership of a political party, to politicians, to appointees, and to public servants;
• donations from corporations, unions and other organizations must be banned (as in Manitoba and Quebec), and donations from related individuals must be limited to a combined total of no more than $1,000 annually to each party and its MPPs or candidates;
• non-political parties (so-called "third-parties") must be restricted in how much they can spend during election campaigns to ensure that wealthy interests cannot dominate debates on issues nor overwhelm individual candidates whose spending is limited;

• anyone who "blows the whistle" about any violation of any law must have an agency to complain to that can investigate, protect them from retaliation and reward them if their allegations prove to be true;
• for the Ontario government, enact all of the measures set out above and the government will act much more responsibly than it does currently;
• for municipal governments, extend all of the measures set out above to them and they will act much more responsibly than they do currently;
• for Ontario corporations, enacting the first step set out above under the category "To empower citizens" will be a very significant step forward in corporate responsibility in Ontario;
• Ontario corporations should be required to disclose detailed information about their records of compliance with labour, environmental, human rights, consumer, health & safety, criminal, competition and tax laws and policies to a government-run, accessible searchable, on-line database, and;
• Ontario corporations that violate the law should be banned from receiving any government subsidy, tax break, contract or grant.

Democracy Watch and the four nation-wide coalitions it coordinates will continue to push the Ontario government to make the meaningful, democratizing changes set out above.