Annual Report

Annual Report

2015

A nn ua l R ep or t 20 15

To the Honourable Speaker of the Legislative Assembly

In my capacity as the Auditor General, I am pleased to submit to you the 2015 Annual Report of the Office of the Auditor General of Ontario to lay before the Assembly in accordance with the provi- sions of section 12 of the Auditor General Act.

Bonnie Lysyk Auditor General

Fall 2015

© 2015, Queen’s Printer for Ontario

Ce document est également disponible en français.

ISSN 1719-2609 (Print)

ISBN 978-1-4606-6726-2 (Print, 2015 ed.)

ISSN 1911-7078 (Online)

ISBN 978-1-4606-6727-9 (PDF, 2015 ed.)

Cover photograph credits:

top left: © iStockphoto.com/Eldad Carin top right: © iStockphoto.com/Pamela Moore bottom left: © iStockphoto.com/choja centre right: © iStockphoto.com/shotbydave

bottom right: © Office of the Auditor General/Mariana Green

Table of Contents

Reflections

⁵

Chapter 1 Summaries of Value-for-money Audits

¹⁷

Chapter 2 Public Accounts of the Province

⁴⁰

Chapter 3 Reports on Value-for-money Audits

⁶⁹

Section 3.01 CCACs—Community Care Access Centres—

Home Care Program 70

Section 3.02 Child Protection Services—Children’s Aid Societies 116 Section 3.03 Child Protection Services Program—Ministry 142 Section 3.04 Economic Development and Employment Programs 167 Section 3.05 Electricity Power System Planning 206 Section 3.06 Hydro One—Management of Electricity Transmission

and Distribution Assets 243

Section 3.07 Infrastructure Planning 282

Section 3.08 LHINs—Local Health Integration Networks 307 Section 3.09 Long-term-care Home Quality Inspection Program 363 Section 3.10 Management of Contaminated Sites 400

Section 3.11 Mines and Minerals Program 434

Section 3.12 SAMS—Social Assistance Management System 471

Section 3.13 Student Transportation 506

Section 3.14 University Intellectual Property 539

Chapter 4 Follow-up to 2013 Value-for-money Audits

⁵⁸¹

Section 4.01 Autism Services and Supports for Children 583

Section 4.02 Health Human Resources 593

Section 4.03 Healthy Schools Strategy 604

Section 4.04 Land Ambulance Services 613

Section 4.05 Ontario Power Generation Human Resources 625

Section 4.06 Private Schools 634

Section 4.07 Provincial Parks 650

Section 4.08 Rehabilitation Services at Hospitals 659

Section 4.09 ServiceOntario 671

Section 4.10 Violence Against Women 685

Chapter 5 Toward Better Accountability

⁶⁹⁶

Chapter 6 Review of Government Advertising

⁷¹⁶

Chapter 7 The Standing Committee on Public Accounts

⁷²⁵

Chapter 8 The Office of the Auditor General of Ontario

⁷³⁸

Exhibit 1 Agencies of the Crown

⁷⁶⁴

Exhibit 2 Crown-controlled Corporations

⁷⁶⁵

Exhibit 3 Organizations in the Broader Public Sector

⁷⁶⁶

Exhibit 4 Treasury Board Orders

⁷⁷¹

5

Introduction

This Annual Report is the third one I have issued as the Auditor General of Ontario. As the report indicates, our work has delved into a wide variety of programs and services that affect Ontarians in every corner of the province. I am sure it will come as no surprise when I say that there are numerous areas where improvements are needed to enhance the quality and cost-effectiveness of government services. It might, however, come as a surprise when I say that we also noted things that the government does get right. But auditors’ reports, by their nature, tend to focus on areas requiring improvements, and this report is no exception.

I am fortunate to have the support of the hard- working members of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts (Committee). I would also like to take this opportunity to salute the staff of my office for their excellent work and contributions to this report. As well, my office appreciates the ongoing co-operation of deputy ministers and their staff and that of the boards and senior management across the broader public sector.

As an independent Office of the Legislative Assembly, it is our job to report the results of our work to the Assembly, including the Committee, and to the citizens of Ontario. Our reports examine areas where the public sector and the broader pub-

lic sector can make improvements to benefit Ontar- ians. We take considerable care in the conduct of our work, the drafting of recommendations, and the writing of fair, evidence-based reports.

The Committee, which includes MPPs from all parties in the Legislature, enjoys the respect of its peers across Canada for its work to ensure that issues in our reports are discussed and that the related recommendations are implemented, and for generating its own reports and recommendations to help ensure that Ontarians receive value for money and benefit from government initiatives, programs and spending.

This section of our report provides a high-level commentary about our audits this year and some of our key messages.

Public Accounts and Ontario’s Growing Debt Burden

We provide some insight into the Public Accounts of Ontario in Chapter 2. I am pleased to report that for the 22^nd year, the government of Ontario has obtained a “clean” audit opinion from the Auditor General on the province’s consolidated financial statements.

As with last year’s Annual Report, our key com- mentary in Chapter 2 this year focuses again on

Reflections

Bonnie Lysyk

Auditor General of Ontario

Ontario’s growing debt burden, with a closer look at the implications of the debt on the province’s finances. Although the debt has been growing at a somewhat lower rate than last year’s estimates, it continues to rise. It will likely continue to rise even after a balanced budget is achieved, because of continuing infrastructure expenditures.

The negative impacts of a large debt burden include debt-servicing costs that divert funding from other programs, greater vulnerability to the impact of interest-rate increases, and potential credit-rating downgrades and changes in investor sentiment, which could make it more expensive for Ontario to borrow.

Consistent with our commentary last year, we take the view that the government should provide legislators and the public with long-term targets for addressing the current and projected debt, and we again recommend that the government develop a long-term debt-reduction plan outlining how it will achieve its own target of reducing net debt to GDP from its current 39.5% to the pre-recession ratio of 27%.

Value-for-money Audits

The 14 value-for-money audits in this year’s Annual Report examine a variety of diverse subjects and fall into one of four broad thematic categories.

These are:

•

maximizing the value of programs that help vulnerable people;

•

ensuring public safety;

•

stewardship of spending and public resources;

and

•

delivering an essential service.

Maximizing the Value of Programs That Help Vulnerable People

As is the case with most developed modern soci- eties, this province devotes substantial resources

to the care of its most vulnerable citizens, an area that we focused on in this year’s audits. Seven of our 14 value-for-money audits examine programs that directly assist children in need of protection, people receiving medical care and people on social assistance.

I believe it is fair to conclude that Ontario really does strive to help its most vulnerable, but our aud- its have also identified a number of areas that need improvement. In addition, our findings suggest that we don’t necessarily have to spend more to do bet- ter; sufficient resources may already be in place, but governance, processes and operational challenges need to be addressed if we are to maximize the value we get from the dollars we are spending.

While all government services help people in one way or another, I want to highlight our audits of those programs and services directed at some of Ontario’s most vulnerable: Child Protection Servi- ces—Children’s Aid Societies; Child Protection Services Program—Ministry; Student Transpor- tation; Community Care Access Centres—Home Care Program; Local Health Integration Net- works; Long-term-care Home Quality Inspection Program; and the Social Assistance Management System.

Children’s Services

Child Protection Services—Children’s Aid Societies

Children suffering mistreatment and abuse in their own homes are a vital priority for any society;

in Ontario, the law says each eligible child must receive all mandatory child-protection services, and waiting lists are not an option.

In 2014/15, the province transferred $1.47 bil- lion to 46 not-for-profit Children’s Aid Societies (Societies) across Ontario (47 effective April 1, 2015). About 43% of this funding provided services for children who had been removed from their homes and placed in the care of Societies, such as in foster, group or relatives’ homes. Over the last five years, the number of children in care has dropped by more than 10%.

Societies initiate a child-protection investiga- tion any time there is a report of reasonable and probable grounds that a child is being abused or mistreated. We found that Societies did not investi- gate child protection cases on a timely basis and did not always complete all required investigative steps.

None of the child protection investigations we reviewed at the Societies we visited were completed within the required 30 days of the Society receiving a report of child protection concerns. On average, the investigations were completed more than seven months after the Societies’ receipt of the report. We also noted that in many cases involving children still in the care of their families, caseworkers visited the children and their families at home only once every three months, instead of once a month as required by protection standards.

Our audit found that Societies may be closing cases too soon. We reviewed closed files that had subsequently been reopened, and found that in more than half, the circumstances and risk factors that led to the reopening of the case were present when the case was closed.

We further noted that service levels also varied at the Societies, and the average number of family service cases that a case worker was responsible for each month ranged from eight to 32.

Child Protection Services Program

The Child Protection Services Program of the Min- istry of Children and Youth Services (Ministry) is responsible for overseeing the Societies discussed above. However, we found that the Ministry can- not provide effective oversight because it lacks sufficient information about the quality of care provided by the Societies. The Ministry recently put in place new performance indicators, but had not established targets so that Societies could know what was expected of them and could then manage their resources accordingly. Having targets would allow them to determine whether performance was getting better and achieving expected results.

Ministry inspections of children’s residences found repeated concerns that remained unresolved from one year to the next.

We also found that the Ministry needs to act on data showing that children in the care of Societies face challenges in the transition to independent living. For example, one survey found that in 2013, only 46% of youth in the care of Societies earned high school diplomas, compared to the Ontario average of 83%. As well, the Provincial Advocate for Children and Youth has identified that an estimated 43% of homeless youth have previous child protec- tion services involvement, and that youth leaving the care of Societies are over-represented in youth justice, mental health and shelter systems.

We also noted problems with the implementa- tion of a new centralized information system and that government funding to Societies was still not based on each Society’s actual needs.

Student Transportation

The transportation of children to and from school requires close attention to ensure the highest levels of safety. Each day, 830,000 Ontario students travel to school and back on approximately 19,000 vehi- cles, at an estimated cost of $880 million for the 2014/15 school year. The organizations involved in providing these services are the ministries of Edu- cation and Transportation, the province’s school boards, 33 transportation consortia formed by the school boards to plan and oversee services, and school bus operators contracted by the consortia to provide services.

We found the consortia need to do a better job of overseeing and monitoring driver competence, and the consortia and the Ministry of Transporta- tion should improve the way they ensure that school vehicles are in good condition. We noted, for example, that there was little oversight of school bus operators, who were allowed to certify their own buses for mechanical fitness.

The government has not set guidelines for the reporting of school vehicle collisions and incidents,

and few consortia were collecting this information to identify the causes of collisions and develop strategies to reduce them. Only limited informa- tion is being tracked by consortia on incidents that impact students, such as late buses and mechanical breakdowns of vehicles. This information could also be used to identify causes of such incidents and develop strategies to prevent them. With the limited comparative information available to us during our audit, we noted a 67% increase in such incidents between 2012/13 and 2013/14, from almost 35,000 incidents to nearly 58,000 incidents.

The Ministry of Education does not require bus safety training for students, and only about half of the consortia members had mandatory student school bus safety training.

Health Care Services

Community Care Access Centres—Home Care Program

Fourteen Community Care Access Centres (CCACs), each responsible for a distinct region of Ontario, spent $2.5 billion in the year ended March 31, 2015, to provide home-care services to 713,500 people who might otherwise have had to stay in hospitals longer or in long-term-care homes. About 60% of the CCACs’ home-care clients were aged 65 or older in 2014/15.

We noted that issues raised in our 2010 audit of CCACs still exist today, including long wait times for some clients, and the fact that clients with similar conditions receive different levels of service depending where in Ontario they live.

Geography also played a role in determin- ing how much service clients received, or even whether they received any service at all. We found that people with similar needs might be deemed qualified to receive services by one CCAC but not by others. Reasons for this include a lack of prov- incial standards to specify what level of service is warranted for different levels of client needs, and that per-client funding varies significantly among CCACs. Another issue related to the fact that CCACs

are not allowed to run deficits, meaning that if a client needs services near the end of a CCAC’s budget year, there may simply not be enough money to provide the service.

Local Health Integration Networks

Ontario’s 14 Local Health Integration Networks (LHINs) are not-for-profit Crown agencies that each manage local health services in a distinct region of the province. LHINs provide $25 billion a year in funding to hospitals, long-term-care homes, CCACs and a variety of other community-based health organizations.

Our audit found that eight years after LHINs assumed their role in managing local health ser- vices, the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care (Ministry) has not developed ways to measure how effectively LHINs are performing as planners, fund- ers and integrators of health care.

The Ministry did establish a set of 15 indicators for LHINs that measure performance over time, but these produced disappointing results: province- wide, nine of the indicators show performance has stayed the same or deteriorated since 2010 or earlier, while improvements were recorded only in the remaining six indicators. For example, one indi- cator showed that patients who no longer needed acute care in hospital nonetheless used a higher percentage of hospital days in the past fiscal year than in 2007.

Other issues included a widening performance gap between individual LHINs between 2012 and 2015 in 10 of the 15 performance areas. For example, patients in the worst-performing LHIN waited 194 days to receive semi-urgent cataract surgery in 2012, which was five times longer than the wait time at the best-performing LHIN. The gap increased to 31 times by 2015.

Long-term-care Home Quality Inspection Program

Ontario has 630 long-term-care homes that provide accommodation and care to about 77,600 people unable to live independently and/or who require

round-the-clock nursing care in a secure setting.

Most residents are over 65 years old, and many may be unable to advocate for themselves. Funding to these homes, through the LHINs, totalled $3.6 bil- lion for the year ending March 31, 2015.

While the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care (Ministry) made good on its commitment to do comprehensive inspections of all 630 homes (completed in January 2015), the backlog of inspections triggered by complaints and critical incidents more than doubled between December 2013 and March 2015. We also noted that 40%

of high-risk complaints and critical incidents that should have triggered immediate inspections took longer than three days to initiate. Over a quarter of these cases took between one and nine months to be followed up on.

The Ministry also lacked an effective process for monitoring compliance orders that require follow- up. About 380 compliance orders, or two-thirds of those due to be completed in 2014, had not been followed up within the Ministry’s own informal 30-day target.

We noted the Ministry took insufficient action against homes that repeatedly failed to comply with orders to fix deficiencies. For instance, in one region, homes failed to comply with almost 40% of the com- pliance orders issued by the Ministry in 2014.

Social Assistance

Social Assistance Management System

About 900,000 Ontarians receive social assistance because they are unemployed and/or have dis- abilities. Social assistance provides financial aid, health benefits, access to basic education, and job counselling and training to some of society’s most vulnerable people to help them become as self- sufficient as possible. About 11,000 provincial and municipal employees rely on computerized systems to administer and deliver $6.6 billion a year in social assistance benefits.

In 2009, the province decided to replace its old social assistance information system with a new

one, called the Social Assistance Management Sys- tem, or SAMS. The new system became operational in November 2014, a year later than planned and about $40 million over budget, with more costs expected to be incurred. At its launch, SAMS had about 2,400 serious defects that caused numerous errors and required caseworkers to do significant extra and time-consuming work to address prob- lems. This left them with less time to provide the full range of case-management services to clients.

SAMS has thus far generated about $140 mil- lion in benefit calculation errors—$89 million in potential overpayments and $51 million in potential underpayments. SAMS also issued many letters and tax slips containing incorrect information, some of which may never be corrected. The impact of this on social-assistance recipients was often dramatic, with people having to repay overpayments or hav- ing benefits incorrectly reduced.

While the Executive Committee responsible for overseeing the SAMS project knowingly assumed some risks by launching SAMS when it did not meet all of the pre-established launch criteria, it was not made aware of key information indicating there were more serious defects than reported, and that some crucial tests had produced results poorer than reported. We also found that SAMS was not piloted with any data converted from the previous system.

According to the Office of the Provincial Controller, SAMS is the only computer system ever connected to the government’s accounting system without first passing government-mandated payment testing.

The Ministry does not anticipate SAMS becoming fully stable until spring 2016. Until then, the final cost of SAMS remains unknown.

Ensuring Public Safety

One of the fundamental duties of any government is to ensure public safety by overseeing the water supply, inspecting food, and enforcing safety laws and regulations covering everything from construc- tion to transportation to law enforcement.

In this area, mistakes or inattention can mean injury or death, so there is little choice but to get it right the first time.

This year, we examined public safety from an environmental perspective by auditing the govern- ment’s Management of Contaminated Sites.

Management of Contaminated Sites

The province has the legal responsibility under the Environmental Protection Act to clean up sites on property under its responsibility that have been contaminated by chemicals or other substances that are hazardous to human health or the environ- ment. In Ontario, several ministries share this responsibility.

In order to carry out such work successfully, gov- ernments need robust systems for identifying con- taminated sites, assessing the nature and extent of contamination, implementing measures to mitigate the risks posed to the public and the environment, and remediating these sites for future use.

Our audit found weaknesses in the government’s processes for identifying, measuring and reporting on its contaminated sites. We found, for example, there was no centralized oversight of the various ministries’ processes for managing their contamin- ated sites and estimating their liabilities in this area.

We also noted the province lacks a government- wide process for prioritizing high-risk sites in need of remediation; nor does it have an overall long- term plan or funding strategy in place for address- ing the estimated $1.8 billion needed to remediate/

clean up its contaminated sites.

Stewardship of Spending and Public Resources

Ontarians entrust two critical responsibilities to their provincial government: the authority to cost- effectively spend more than $100 billion a year, and the stewardship of natural resources in a way that generates appropriate revenues but remains environmentally sound.

In an effort to stimulate economic development and sustain employment, the government dispenses billions in grants and loans to businesses and universities, and it spends billions more to build and maintain public infrastructure. With respect to natural resources, it also oversees Canada’s largest mining sector.

Our Annual Report this year examined these critical areas with audits of Economic Develop- ment and Employment Programs, Infrastructure Planning, University Intellectual Property, and Mines and Minerals Program.

Economic Development and Employment Programs

The Ministry of Economic Development, Employ- ment and Infrastructure (Ministry) provides multi- year grants and interest-free loans to businesses to help support economic development and employ- ment. Over the last 11 years, it has committed

$2.36 billion in support to 374 projects of varying size, and has thus far disbursed $1.45 billion of the commitment.

We noted, however, that the Ministry has not attempted to measure whether the $1.45 billion it has provided to Ontario businesses since 2004 actually strengthened the economy or made recipi- ents more competitive. The Ministry’s new Strategic Investment Framework, as well, does not include a plan for measuring outcomes from future economic development and employment supports, including for its new Jobs and Prosperity Fund.

Our audit also determined that since 2010, about 80% of approved funding was made through unadvertised processes in which only selected busi- nesses were invited to apply. The Ministry could not provide us with the criteria it used to identify those businesses it invited to apply.

Over the last 10 years, the government publicly re-announced almost $1 billion of economic- development and employment support funding projects that had already been announced under different funding programs.

Infrastructure Planning

Ontario is served by a vast portfolio of public infra- structure—everything from bridges to hospitals to government buildings to universities—with a replacement value of close to $500 billion. The government oversees about 40% of these assets either directly or through broader-public-sector organizations. Many of these assets are aging, with the average Ontario hospital being 45 years old and the average school 38 years old. Proper plan- ning is required to ensure existing infrastructure is adequately maintained and new assets built as required.

We found that the government plans to devote two-thirds of its infrastructure spending over the next 10 years to building new assets, and one-third to maintaining and renewing existing proper- ties—even though its own analysis indicated that it should be the other way around.

The province has no guidelines in place that specify the desired condition at which facilities should be maintained, and there is no consistency among ministries on how to measure the condition of assets such as highways, bridges, schools and hospitals.

Total provincial funding for the maintenance of all hospitals in the past fiscal year was $125 million, although an independent assessment identified annual funding needs of $392 million. Annual funding to maintain schools has ranged in the last five years between $150 million and $500 million, although another independent assessment said the province’s schools need $1.4 billion a year to be kept in a state of good repair.

We also found that the government does not always allocate funding based on the current most urgent needs in the province, but tends to allocate it instead on a historical basis—that is, based on what a ministry or organization received in the past.

University Intellectual Property

In the last five years, the provincial government has invested an estimated $1.9 billion in university

research programs, including funding to com- mercialize, or bring to market, intellectual property developed by universities.

Our audit found that the Ministry of Research and Innovation does not co-ordinate or track the province’s total investments in research and innova- tion; nor has it measured the value created from these investments to determine whether value for money has been achieved. In addition, the province has virtually no rights to any of the intellectual property whose development it funds.

We also noted that while the government has, and follows, a comprehensive selection process for awarding university grants, it does not confirm that research outcomes align with those identified in the original grant proposals.

We further noted that while universities’ tech- nology transfer offices had experience assessing the commercialization potential of inventions, they could make improvements in measuring what value was achieved from the money invested in research.

Mines and Minerals Program

Ontario is Canada’s largest producer of minerals, accounting for one-quarter of all production in this country.

Our audit found that the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines (Ministry) has not been effective in encouraging mineral development in the province, with a 2014 Fraser Institute survey ranking Ontario ninth among all Canadian prov- inces and territories in investment attractiveness for mineral exploration. The Ministry’s marketing strategies may be ineffective, and the Ministry is slow to make geosciences information available to the mining industry.

The Ring of Fire mineral find in a remote region of northern Ontario was identified in 2008 as North America’s richest deposit of chromite, a mineral essential to the manufacture of stainless steel.

Chromite and nickel deposits in the Ring of Fire have an estimated potential value of $60 billion.

We also noted that while the Ring of Fire deposits represent one of the province’s greatest mining opportunities, particularly when mineral prices rebound, the area is still not close to having the basic infrastructure to encourage mining invest- ments; nor are there detailed plans or timelines in place for developing the region.

Our audit also found that the Ministry lacks adequate processes to manage mine closure plans and the rehabilitation of 4,400 abandoned mines.

Delivering an Essential Service

At the end of the 19^th century, Ontario began build- ing what would become one of the world’s leading electricity supply and transmission systems. How- ever, today that system faces serious challenges.

It takes a great deal of expertise and financial resources to maintain an electricity system as big and as complex as Ontario’s, and significant exper- tise and information to plan for its future well-being.

We examine two areas this year with audits of Hydro One—Management of Electricity Trans- mission and Distribution Assets and Electricity Power System Planning.

Hydro One—Management of Electricity Transmission and Distribution Assets

Hydro One Inc., one of the largest electricity deliv- ery systems in North America, supplies power to most of Ontario’s local distribution companies and large industrial customers, as well as to 1.4 million residential and business customers directly.

Hydro One’s mandate is to be a safe, reliable and cost-effective transmitter and distributor of elec- tricity. Instead, its customers have had to deal with worsening reliability and higher prices. Customers are experiencing more frequent power outages, largely due to an asset-management program that has not been effective or timely in maintaining assets or replacing aging equipment, and due to an untimely vegetation management program that has

not been effectively reducing the number of out- ages caused by trees near power lines.

We noted, for example, that in the five years from 2010 to 2014, transmission system out- ages have been lasting 30% longer and occur- ring 24% more often. Hydro One’s overall

transmission-system reliability compares favourably to other Canadian transmitters, but has worsened in comparison to U.S. transmitters. Hydro One’s distribution system has consistently been one of the least reliable among large Canadian electricity distributors between 2010 and 2014. In a scorecard published by the Ontario Energy Board in 2014, Hydro One was ranked the worst of all distributors in Ontario for duration of outages and second- worst for frequency of outages in 2013.

Hydro One’s backlog of preventive mainten- ance orders on its transmission system equipment increased 47% between 2012 and 2014, which has contributed to an increased number of equipment failures.

The government passed the Building Ontario Up Act in June 2015 to permit the sale of up to 60% of the province’s common shares in Hydro One, with the province retaining at least 40%. This legisla- tion also removed the authority of the Office of the Auditor General to conduct value-for-money audits at Hydro One. As a result, this year’s audit, which commenced prior to the tabling of the Building Ontario Up Act, will be the last on Hydro One to be done by this Office.

Electricity Power System Planning

An enormous amount of ongoing technical plan- ning is required for Ontario to determine how it will meet its future electricity demands. This planning involves managing the long-term demand for electricity, and determining how to meet that demand through generation, transmission, distri- bution, exporting, importing and conservation of electricity.

Entities involved in Ontario’s power system planning include the Ministry of Energy (Ministry),

the Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO), the Ontario Energy Board (OEB), Ontario Power Generation (OPG), Hydro One, four other small licensed transmitters and approximately 70 local distribution companies. (The Ontario Power Authority, or OPA, was responsible for conducting independent planning for electricity generation, conservation and transmission in Ontario until its merger in 2015 with the IESO.)

Given the current comparatively high prices that consumers pay for electricity in Ontario, it is espe- cially critical that Ontario determine how it will meet its future electricity demand in the most cost- effective manner. Ontario’s residential and small- business electricity consumers have already had an 80% increase in the electricity portion of their bills, including Global Adjustment fees, between 2004 and 2014. In particular, Global Adjustment fees, which are the excess payments to generators over the market price, amounted to $37 billion from 2006 to 2014, and these payments are projected to cost electricity consumers another $133 billion from 2015 to 2032.

We found that the planning process had essentially broken down over the past decade, and Ontario’s electricity power system did not have an overall technical plan in place for the last 10 years that was reviewed by the OEB, as required by legis- lation. In the absence of a technical plan, the Min- istry has made a number of decisions about power generation that went against the OPA’s technical advice and did not fully consider the state of the electricity market or the long-term effects. These decisions have resulted in significant costs to elec- tricity consumers. For example, we calculated that electricity consumers have had to pay $9.2 billion more (the IESO calculates this amount to be closer to $5.3 billion in order to reflect the time value of money) for power from renewable energy electri- city projects over the 20-year contract terms under the Ministry’s current guaranteed-price renewable program than they would have paid under the pre- vious procurement program.

Recurring Issues in This Year’s Audits

Some of the 14 value-for money audits in this year’s Annual Report also touch on issues that we have discussed in previous years. Two such issues this year are:

•

access to equitable service regardless of loca- tion of residence; and

•

better information needed to support decision-making

Access to Equitable Service

Regardless of Residence Location

Ontarians likely assume they have a fundamental right to access equitable provincial government services regardless of where in Ontario they live.

However, in this year’s audits, we once again found repeated instances where a person’s address can affect the quality and quantity of services they receive.

As noted in the earlier discussion of health-care services, geography affected the quality and the quantity of service provided by the province’s Com- munity Care Access Centres—Home Care Program and by the Local Health Integration Networks.

We also observed the standard of service offered by Ontario’s Children’s Aid Societies varied depending on the region being served and that there are differences in eligibility for Student Trans- portation services across the province.

This issue often arises when the government funds a program based on previous, or historical, levels rather than on a current assessment of actual need. Where appropriate, we recommend that ministries base funding decisions on actual meas- ured needs.

Better Information Needed

It has been a long-standing contention of this Office that good decisions require reliable, objective and pertinent information underlying the decision- making process. We make the same observation this year, and we further note that some critical information does not even exist.

As noted earlier, the Ministry of Children and Youth Services lacks sufficient information about the quality of care provided by Children’s Aid Soci- eties to properly carry out its mandated oversight of the Societies.

We also found that Treasury Board Secretariat, responsible for Infrastructure Planning, generally evaluated infrastructure funding requests from each ministry on a stand-alone basis, and did little comparison at an overall provincial level to ensure the most pressing needs receive top priority for funding. The province also has no reliable estimate of its infrastructure deficit—the investment needed to rehabilitate existing assets to an “acceptable”

condition—to better inform where spending should be directed.

Contaminated sites can pose a threat to public health and to the environment—but the govern- ment maintains no centralized list of such sites in its Management of Contaminated Sites. In addition, the government has not designated a central lead ministry to take responsibility for the clean-up of these sites and to advise the public of threats.

Follow-ups on the Value-for- money Audits of 2013

A key part of our Office’s work is following up on the implementation of recommendations in our past audit reports. This year, we followed up on the implementation status of 61 recommendations, requiring 158 actions, from the value-for-money audits we conducted in 2013. We found that 76%

of these actions have been either fully implemented

or are in the process of being implemented. While the goal is full implementation, we noted posi- tive intent by the various stakeholders to finish implementing the recommendations that are still in process. In particular, the following stand out as having fully implemented a significant portion of their recommendations from audits two years ago:

the Ministry of Education with respect to our audit on Private Schools; Ontario Power Generation;

ServiceOntario; and the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care and the subject hospitals in our audit of Rehabilitation Services. Follow-up reports are discussed and presented in Chapter 4.

This year, we began to publish follow-ups to reports issued by the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, and have included these in Chapter 7.

We followed up on the recommendations made in the following three Committee reports:

•

Violence Against Women;

•

Ontario Power Generation Human Resources;

and

•

Health Human Resources.

In total, the three reports contained 24 recom- mendations involving 45 actions. We found that 91% of these recommended actions had either been fully implemented or were in the process of being implemented.

Chapter 5—Toward Better Accountability

This year marks the introduction of a new section in our Annual Report that will highlight subjects related to accountability, governance and/or transparency, in addition to items raised in our value-for-money audits. We are using this section this year to highlight our examination of the timeli- ness of provincial agencies in publicly reporting on their activities through their annual reports.

Most provincial agencies are required to produce annual reports and submit them to their responsible minister within a specified time period. Ministers

are then to review the reports and make them pub- lic, either by tabling them in the Legislature or by approving them for posting on an agency or govern- ment website. Based on our review of a sample of annual reports for 2014, we noted that timelines in legislation or memorandums of understanding for tabling annual reports varied and were seldom met.

As well, over the last three years, only a small proportion of provincial agencies’ annual reports were tabled in the Legislature in accordance with the timetables specified in the Management Board directive in effect at the time. We reviewed the timeliness of such reporting for a sample of 57 agencies, and found that only 5% were tabled within six months after the agencies’ fiscal year- end, while 68% were tabled more than 12 months after year-end, and 6% had not been tabled at all.

Our work further showed that the major delays were often in the ministers’ offices. A new Manage- ment Board directive that became effective this year increased the content requirement for annual reports, but no longer requires a minister to table a

report in the Legislature within 60 days of receiving it when the Legislature is in session, or file a report with the Clerk of the Legislature within 60 days of receiving it when the Legislature is not sitting.

Acknowledgments

I want to thank the many people in the public sector and the broader public sector who were involved in our work for their assistance and co-operation in the completion of this year’s audits. We look for- ward to continuing to serve the Legislative Assem- bly and, through it, the citizens of Ontario.

Sincerely,

Bonnie Lysyk

Auditor General of Ontario

Our Team

It takes a massive effort by many people to perform the research, audit, writing and administrative-support work required to produce an Annual Report of this scope and substance. The following is a list of the people with our Office who worked to produce this Report:

Ahmed, Fatima Ali, Shams Ali, Syed Zain Allan, Walter Amerski, Bartosz Amodeo, Paul Aro, Kevin

Balakrishnan, Arujunan Beben, Izabela

Bell, Laura

Bordenca, Koreena Bove, Tino

Budihadjo, Audelyn Carello, Teresa Chagani, Gus Chan, Ariane Chan, Sandy Chang, Sally Chatzidimos, Tom Cheung, Anita Cheung, Loretta Chiu, Rudolph Cho, Kim Chu, Mary Cumbo, Wendy De Sousa, Constantino DeSouza, Marcia Dimitrov, Dimitar Dufour, Jesse Dupuis, Vanessa Exaltacion, Katrina Fitzmaurice, Gerard Fletcher, Kandy Ganatra, Neil

Gill, Rashmeet Goel, Ash Gotsis, Vanna Gravenor, Evan Green, Mariana Hanna, Lauren Herberg, Naomi Ho, Veronica Klein, Susan Koh, Li-Lian Lee, Jennifer Lee, Peter Leung, Benjamin Lew, Taylor Lozinsky, Arie Malik, Mohak Marume, Kundai May, Kristy Mazzone, Vince MacDonald, Cindy McDowell, John McGibbon, Shirley Muhammad, Shuaib Munroe, Roger Myers, Sohani Ng, Wendy Nowak, Alice Parmar, Gurinder Pedias, Christine Pellerin, Louise Pelow, Bill Persaud, Shanta

Premachandran, Subran

Qazi, Osman Randoja, Tiina Rodriguez, Oscar Rogers, Fraser Romano, Mary Saeed, Shariq Shah, Aaqib Shah, Shreya

Siddiqui, Mohammed Sidhu, Pasha

Sim, Megan Sin, Vivian

Stavropoulos, Nick Stekovic, Zhenya Tanudjaja, Georgegiana Tepelenas, Ellen Thomas, Zachary Truong, Alexander Tsikritsis, Emanuel Tso, Cynthia Ulisse, Dora Volodina, Alla Wan, Janet Wanchuk, Brian Wang, Jing Whalen, Claire Wilson, Robyn

Wu Sak Wing, Christine Yarmolinsky, Michael Yeung, Celia

Yip, Gigi

Yosipovich, Rebecca Young, Denise

Chapter 1

Summaries of

Value-for-money Audits

17

3.01 Community Care Access Centres—Home Care Program

Ontario’s 14 Community Care Access Centres (CCACs) are responsible for providing home-care services to Ontarians who might otherwise need to stay in hospitals or long-term-care homes.

Home care is publicly funded by the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care (Ministry). In order to be eligible for home-care services, a person must be insured under the Ontario Health Insurance Plan.

Referrals for home-care services can be made by hospitals, family physicians, or clients and/or their families. Each CCAC is accountable to one of the province’s 14 Local Health Integration Networks (LHINs), which are, in turn, accountable to the Ministry.

In recent years, home-care clients have had increasingly complex medical and social-support needs, due mainly to the fact that, since 2009, Ontario hospitals have been expected to discharge most patients who do not really need to be in acute- care settings. In the year ending March 31, 2015, 60% of home-care clients were aged 65 and over.

CCACs assess people to determine if their health needs qualify them for home-care services, and then develop care plans for those who qualify.

CCACs contract with about 160 private-sector, for- profit or not-for-profit service providers to provide home-care services directly to clients.

In the fiscal year ending March 31, 2015, Ontario spent $2.5 billion to provide home-care

services to 713,500 clients. This represents a 42%

increase in funding and 22% increase in the num- ber of clients compared to 2008/09, a year before our last audit of home-care services in 2010.

From 2005/06 to 2014/15, overall CCAC funding (for home care and other services) has increased by 73%, but has remained a relatively constant 4% to 5% of overall provincial health spending. The Ministry has recognized the value of home and community care, and it has issued a number of reports highlighting the importance of strengthening this sector.

Despite these positive efforts, some of the issues we raised in our 2010 audit of the home-care program still exist. For example, clients still face long wait times for personal-support services, and clients whose needs have been similarly assessed still receive different levels of service depending on where in Ontario they live.

We found that a person assessed to receive services by one CCAC might not receive services at another. A number of factors influence this, such as the lack of provincial standards that specify what level of service is warranted for different levels of clients’ needs, and the fact that per-client funding varies significantly among CCACs despite reforms to the funding formula that began in April 2012. As a result, to stay within budget, each CCAC exercises its own discretion on the types and levels of services it provides—thereby contributing to significant differences in admission criteria and service levels

Chapter 1

between CCACs. Further, because CCACs cannot run deficits, the time of year a client is referred, and their level of need, can also influence whether they receive services or not.

Because the availability of community support services such as assisted living and respite care varies across the province (many community sup- port service agencies were historically set up by volunteers to serve local needs; such agencies are not prevalent in rural and northern areas), some CCACs may be required to provide more services to their clients when no other agencies can provide the necessary additional support.

Until these overarching issues are addressed, clients in Ontario will continue to receive inequit- able home-care services. Our specific observations include the following:

•

The caseloads of CCAC workers who co- ordinate clients’ care vary significantly from one CCAC to another, and within the same CCAC. In two of the CCACs we visited, caseloads did not comply with guidelines developed by the Ontario Association of Com- munity Care Access Centres. For example, one CCAC’s care co-ordinators on average carried 30% larger caseloads for chronic clients than recommended.

•

For budgetary reasons, CCACs are not able to provide personal support services to the maximum levels allowed by law. Care co-ordinators still, for the most part, assess clients to receive up to 60 hours of personal support services per month versus 90 hours as permitted by law. Furthermore, Ontario’s regulation is silent on the minimum amount of services that can be provided. As a result, there is no minimum service level require- ment for personal support services that CCACs must provide to their clients—for instance, a specified minimum number of baths per week.

•

At the three CCACs we visited, 65% of initial home-care assessments and 32% of reassess- ments for chronic and complex clients were not conducted within the required time

frames in 2014/15. Some clients were not assessed or reassessed in almost one year, and some beyond a year.

•

Not all care co-ordinators maintained their proficiency in, and some were not regularly tested on, the use of assessment tools.

•

CCACs do not consistently conduct site visits to ensure that the service providers with whom they have contracted are complying with contract requirements. For example, none of the three CCACs we visited had veri- fied that service providers accurately and completely reported incidents of missed visits.

Our recommendations included that the Ministry explore better ways to apply the funding reform formulas to address the funding inequities;

develop standard guidelines for prioritizing clients for services, and monitor for compliance to those guidelines; assess the types of caregiver supports and initiatives available in other jurisdictions, and consider approaches to use in Ontario; require all health-service providers to upload complete assessment information on a common system; and make more CCAC results on performance measures publicly available.

We also recommended that CCACs assess and reassess clients within the required time frames;

require that all CCAC care co-ordinators comply with the minimum number of assessments per month and be tested on the use of the assessment tools each year, and monitor compliance to that requirement; reassess and, where necessary, revise current guidelines for care co-ordinator caseload sizes; and develop performance indicators and tar- gets and collect from contracted service providers relevant data that measure client outcomes.

This report contains 14 recommendations, con- sisting of 31 actions, to address our audit findings.

3.02 Child Protection Services—

Children’s Aid Societies

Child protection services in Ontario are governed by the Child and Family Services Act (Act), the

Chapter 1 purpose of which is to promote the best interests,

protection and well-being of children. The Ministry of Children and Youth Services (Ministry) admin- isters the Child Protection Services Program, and contracts with 47 local not-for-profit Children’s Aid Societies (Societies) that deliver child protection services throughout Ontario.

Ministry transfer payments to Societies to fund their expenditures were $1.47 billion in the 2014/15 fiscal year. About 40% of Societies’

expenditures were for services for children who had been removed from their homes and placed in the care of Societies in foster, group or relatives’

homes. Over the last five fiscal years, the number of children in the care of Societies has declined by more than 10%.

Societies are independent legal entities, each governed by an independent volunteer board of directors. By law, each Society is required to pro- vide all mandatory child protection services to all eligible children. In other words, waiting lists are not an option for child protection services. Societies initiate a child protection investigation for any reported concern where there are reasonable and probable grounds that a child may need protection from abuse or mistreatment.

Overall, our audit found that there were differ- ences in the levels of service and support provided by Societies, and that workers at the various Soci- eties had vastly different caseloads. The average number of family service cases per worker ranged from eight to 32 per month. These differences could affect the consistency of care and support received by children and families across the province.

Our significant observations include the following:

•

Societies may be closing child protection cases too soon. In more than half the files we reviewed that subsequently were reopened, the circumstances and risk factors that were responsible for the reopening of the case had been present when the case was initially closed.

•

Societies did not investigate child protection cases on a timely basis and did not always complete all required investigative steps.

None of the child protection investigations we reviewed at the Societies we visited were completed within the required 30 days of the Society receiving the report of child protection concerns. On average, the investigations were completed more than seven months after the Society’s receipt of the report. As well, Safety Assessments to identify immediate safety threats to the child were either not conducted or not conducted on time.

•

Societies did not always conduct timely home visits and service plan reviews in cases involv- ing children still in the care of their families.

In more than half the files we reviewed, case- workers visited the children and their families at home only every three months, instead of every month as required by protection standards.

•

Societies did not always complete Plans of Care—designed to address, among other things, a child’s health, education and emo- tional and behavioural development—on a timely basis.

•

Societies did not always do child protec- tion history checks on people involved with children. This increases the risk that children are left in the care of people with histories of domestic violence or child abuse.

•

The Continued Care and Supports for Youth (CCSY) program is not achieving its objective of preparing youth for transition out of care.

In almost half the files we reviewed, there was no evidence the youths were involved in reasonable efforts to prepare to transition to independent living and adulthood.

We recommended that Societies meet all legisla- tive and program requirements when delivering protection services; ensure that protection cases are not closed prematurely; assist youth to transi- tion to independent living and adulthood; develop standard caseload benchmarks; and ensure that

Chapter 1

funding is used to appropriately to provide direct services to children and families while identifying opportunities to improve service delivery.

This report contains six recommendations, consisting of eight actions, to address our audit findings.

3.03 Child Protection Services Programs—Ministry

Child protection services in Ontario are governed by the Child and Family Services Act (Act), the purpose of which is to promote the best interests, protection and well-being of children. The Ministry of Children and Youth Services (Ministry) admin- isters the Child Protection Services Program, and contracts with 47 local not-for-profit Children’s Aid Societies (Societies) that deliver child protection services throughout Ontario. Some of those who receive services are Crown wards (children placed in the care of a Society and living in a group home or foster home, or with next of kin).

Services provided under most other programs administered by ministries are subject to the avail- ability of funding; however, by the law that governs the Child Protection Services Program, each Society is required to provide all mandatory child protec- tion services to all eligible children. In other words, waiting lists are not an option for child protection services.

Ministry transfer payments to Societies to fund their expenditures were $1.47 billion in the 2014/15 fiscal year. Until 2012/13, transfers to Societies were based on historical funding. As of 2013/14, how- ever, Ministry funding has been calculated using a formula based on the economic situation of the community in which a Society is located and on its volume of cases. However, Societies are not allowed to spend more than they receive in funding, and the new funding model still does not provide funding based on Societies’ service needs.

Ontarians expect that the child protection services will ensure that children and their fam- ilies receive the care and support they need. The

Ministry must have sufficient oversight processes in place to help Societies meet their mandated requirements, so that children and families get suit- able protection services when they need them.

We found that the Ministry cannot provide effective oversight of Societies because it does not have enough information about the protection services the Societies are providing to most children they serve. The Ministry has not established targets to allow it to measure the progress of Societies in meeting the performance indicators the Ministry has recently put in place.

The Ministry also needs to better ensure that the pressures Societies face to not exceed their fund- ing allocation, as well as problems associated with implementing the new, centralized Child Protection Information Network system, are not adversely affecting their ability to deliver child protection services.

Additional significant issues include the following:

•

The Ministry needs to act on data that shows that young people who have received pro- tection services face significant challenges when transitioning to independent living. For example, a survey by the Ontario Association of Children’s Aid Societies found that in 2013, only 46% of youth in the care of Societies earned high school diplomas, compared to the Ontario average of 83%. As well, the Prov- incial Advocate for Children and Youth has identified that an estimated 43% of homeless youth have previous child protection services involvement, and that youth leaving the care of Societies are over-represented in youth justice, mental health and shelter systems.

•

Annual reviews of Crown ward files to assess whether their needs have been addressed have identified concerns that have not been addressed from one year to the next. Issues have included failing to develop a plan of care that identifies the child’s strengths, needs and goals and that is updated to reflect the child’s progress.

Chapter 1

•

The Ministry’s oversight of non-Crown wards who receive protection services is limited as it does not review the files of non-Crown wards.

•

Ministry licensing inspections of children’s residences found repeated concerns that were not addressed.

•

The Ministry’s Child Protection Information Network (CPIN) system is currently not deliv- ering on its promised benefits despite signifi- cant investments in time and money. Although the Ministry expected to have CPIN in use by all Societies by the end of the 2014/15 fiscal year at a total cost of $150 million, as of the end of 2014/15, CPIN has been deployed in just five of the province’s 47 Societies. The Ministry’s revised plan hopes to have CPIN deployed to the remaining Societies by the end of the 2019/20 fiscal year at an estimated total cost of $200 million.

In our report, we recommend that the Ministry appropriately monitor and asses the performance of Societies and identify opportunities to improve protection services; consider the feedback they are receiving for extending child protection services to all children under the age of 18; review Soci- eties’ files for non-Crown wards in receipt of child protection services; ensure that funding provided to Societies is commensurate with each Society’s needs; work with Societies to identify opportunities for improving efficiency of their service delivery;

and determine the cost of CPIN implementation to the remaining Societies, the impact of such costs on Societies’ ability to deliver mandated child protec- tion services within their budget allocations and how such costs should be funded.

This report contains nine recommendations, con- sisting of 12 actions, to address our audit findings.

3.04 Economic Development and Employment Programs

To help support economic development and employment, the provincial government provides multi-year grants and interest-free loans to busi-

nesses for projects ranging from expansion to export growth to research and development.

Several ministries deliver these supports, but the funds that focus entirely on existing businesses flow through the Ministry of Economic Develop- ment, Employment and Infrastructure (Ministry), formerly the Ministry of Economic Development, Trade and Employment.

From 2004 to May 31, 2015, the Ministry had committed $2.36 billion—$1.87 billion in grants and

$489 million in loans—to 374 projects through seven of its funds, each of which has a distinct mandate and focuses on a particular industry or geographic area of the province. Of that amount, the Ministry disbursed $1.45 billion, and the remaining $913 mil- lion was to be paid out over the next 11 years, as the projects are being completed and if they meet job and investment targets. In the last decade, the Min- istry’s seven funds have assisted projects involving information and communication technology, clean/

green technology, financial services, life sciences, and projects in the automotive, manufacturing, and research and development sectors.

The Ministry generally performed well with respect to the approval process in administering and overseeing its own economic-development and employment-support programs. In addition, the projects have had success in leveraging investments by businesses in Ontario and in creating and/or retaining jobs.

In January 2015, the government announced it would fold many existing programs into a new

$2.7-billion Jobs and Prosperity Fund, with $2 bil- lion administered by the Ministry and $700 million by other ministries.

Following are some of our significant observations:

•

The Ministry has not attempted to measure whether the almost $1.5 billion it has pro- vided to Ontario businesses since 2004 has actually strengthened the economy or made recipients of the money more competitive.

As well, the Ministry’s new Strategic Invest- ment Framework does not include a plan for

Chapter 1

measuring outcomes from future economic development and employment supports, including for its new Jobs and Prosperity Fund. Although the Ministry measures actual investment achieved, actual jobs created and retained, total contracted investment lever- aged and total cost per job per year, it has not set a goal for minimum GDP growth or unemployment rate reductions, either at the local level or for the overall economy. Other provinces have set such goals to guide their economic development efforts.

•

Even though Ontario, like most other prov- inces, has shown improved economic perform- ance in each of the last four years, the need for the Ministry to ensure its programs benefit the economy is still important. Many expert reports question whether such programs and funding actually achieve any economic benefits.

•

While the Ministry recognizes the economic benefits of promoting key regions and establishing industry “clusters”—geographic concentrations of interconnected businesses, suppliers, and associated institutions in a particular field—it is just beginning to develop strategies for its involvement in each region and cluster that identifies key strengths and barriers or weaknesses that it can help to address.

•

Expert reports over the last several years have also highlighted the importance of small- and medium-sized businesses, which account for about one-third of Ontario’s GDP. While 40% of the number of projects funded by the Ministry related to existing small- and medium-sized businesses, the dollar value of that support amounted to less than 4% of its total funding. The Ministry has neither assessed how many small- and medium-sized businesses lack access to supports, nor made it clear why its funding is targeted primarily to large businesses.

•

The Ministry’s mandate is to support a strong, innovative and competitive economy that provides jobs and prosperity for all Ontarians;

however, nine other ministries independently also provide similar funding to businesses. As such, the Ministry does not have the authority to co-ordinate with other ministries, which deliver $1.8 billion of additional economic development and employment support fund- ing. Although the new Strategic Investment Framework outlined an “all-of-government”

approach, each of the other nine ministries still continues to deliver support funding without the overall co-ordination that could ensure the best use of funds. Expert reports have recommended this type of funding be consolidated across ministries to achieve administrative efficiencies and help govern- ment target funding to certain sectors or areas of the province.

•

There is a need for more transparency in how invitation-based funding is awarded. Since 2010, about 80% of approved funding was committed through non-publicly advertised processes, in which only select businesses were invited to apply. The Ministry deter- mined internally which businesses were to be invited, but it could not provide us with the criteria it used to identify the businesses it invited to apply, or a list of those whose appli- cations were not successful.

•

Past funding was often awarded without a proper needs assessment. The Ministry almost never assessed whether businesses needed public funding in order to achieve the proposed project. Furthermore, some projects were approved for funding even though there was evidence they would have proceeded without government help.

•

The Ministry does not monitor recipients to see whether jobs that are created or retained during the life of the funding contract con- tinue after the contract expires. Contracts are normally for five years, but the Ministry has

Chapter 1 no information on whether the jobs the recipi-

ent offered to create or retain during those five years are maintained afterwards.

•

Over the last 10 years and as recently as Janu- ary 2015, the government publicly announced almost $1 billion more in economic-develop- ment and employment-support funding projects by re-announcing the same available funding under different fund programs.

Among other things, we recommended that the Ministry develop a comprehensive strategy for economic development and employment that estab- lishes targets by industry sector and geographic region; seek to become the lead ministry respon- sible for overseeing and achieving a comprehensive provincial strategy for economic development and employment programs; add greater transparency in accepting applications and selecting the qualify- ing businesses to which it provides funding; and expand performance measures beyond investment and employment results to include whether benefits to the economy continue after project completion.

This report contains nine recommendations, consisting of 17 actions, to address our audit findings.

3.05 Electricity Power System Planning

Electricity power system planning involves man- aging the long-term demand for electricity, and determining how to meet that demand through generation, transmission, distribution, exporting, importing and conservation of electricity.

In Ontario, entities involved in province-wide power system planning include the Ministry of Energy (Ministry), the Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO), the Ontario Energy Board (OEB), Ontario Power Generation (OPG), Hydro One, four other small licenced transmitters and approximately 70 local distribution companies.

The importance of planning is reflected in provincial legislation: The Electricity Act, 1998, was amended in 2004 to require the Ontario Power

Authority, or OPA (which was subsequently merged with the IESO in 2015), to conduct independent planning, prepare a detailed technical plan and submit it to the OEB for review and approval to ensure that it is prudent and cost-effective.

However, no such plan has ever been approved in the last 10 years as required by the legislation to protect consumers’ interests. Instead, the Ministry has issued two policy plans in 2010 and 2013 that were not subject to OEB review and approval. While these policy plans provided some technical infor- mation, we found that they were not sufficient for addressing Ontario power system’s needs and for protecting electricity consumers’ interests.

While the checks and balances of the legislated planning process were not followed, the Ministry made a number of decisions about power genera- tion through 93 ministerial directives and direc- tions issued to the OPA from 2004 to 2014. Some of these went against the OPA’s technical advice and did not fully consider the state of the electricity market or the long-term effects. These decisions resulted in significant costs to electricity consum- ers. From 2006 to 2014, the amount that residen- tial and small-business electricity consumers paid for the electricity commodity portion of their bill (including Global Adjustment fees) increased by 70%, from 5.32 cents/kWh to 9.06 cents/kWh. In particular, Global Adjustment fees, which are the excess payments to generators over the market price, amounted to a total of $37 billion from 2006 to 2014. These payments are projected to cost elec- tricity consumers another $133 billion from 2015 to 2032.

Among our significant observations:

•

We calculated that electricity consumers have had to pay $9.2 billion more (the IESO calcu- lated this amount to be closer to $5.3 billion, in order to reflect the time value of money) for renewables over the 20-year contract terms under the Ministry’s current guaranteed- price renewable program than they would have paid under the previous procurement program.