Thursday, November 18, 2004

OTTAWA - Today, as Ontario Minister for Democratic Renewal Michael Bryant announced new democratic reform initiatives, Democracy Watch called on the Ontario government to ensure changes are made, and to expand its reform plan to address clear problems with government accountability and corporate responsibility in Ontario.

The Ontario government's moves to fix the date of elections, restrict government advertising leading up to elections, and giving the Auditor General the power to report on the actual level of government deficits and debt are all steps in the right direction, as are the new announcements to consult with the public on changes to the political donations system and voting system, but much more needs to be done.

"Even if the Ontario Liberals make all the changes they have promised, the Ontario government will remain too corporate-driven and unaccountable between elections, and corporations in Ontario will remain far too unaccountable" said Duff Conacher, Coordinator of Democracy Watch. "Much more needs to be done to ensure that the Ontario government and Ontario corporations are honest, ethical, open, efficient, representative, responsive and responsible."

Democracy Watch proposed the following 18 changes that need to be made, including to the political donations and voting systems, 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;

• 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;
• ethics rules must be established for lobbyists specifically to restrict unethical relationships between lobbyists and public officials (as the federal government has done), with complaints going to the Ethics Commissioner;

• 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;

• all government accountability watchdogs (the Ethics Commissioner, the Information and Privacy Commissioner, the Auditor General) 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

• the voting system should be changed to ensure that the popular vote is more accurately represented in the legislature, with safeguards to ensure that MPPs remain accountable to constituents, and no party has disproportionate power;

• 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 pass "Open Meetings" Bill 123) 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.