Ontario's fiscal watchdog to look into ServiceOntario deal
CBC
Ontario's fiscal watchdog says it will look into a provincial decision to close nine ServiceOntario centres and replace them with kiosks inside select Staples Canada stores, after a Liberal MPP called for an inquiry.
The Financial Accountability Office announced the inquiry in a statement on Monday, saying it will seek to understand the "fiscal impact" of the government's decision. The FAO said the scope of its "research project" will be limited to the relocation of nine ServiceOntario centres to Staples Canada retail outlets.
The FAO's announcement comes after Stephanie Bowman, who represents Don Valley West, wrote to the FAO in January about the deal and asked it to look into plans by the government to move ServiceOntario kiosks into Staples Canada and Walmart stores. The FAO, however, says it will look at only the deal with Staples Canada.
"The report will compare the financial costs and benefits of the government's contract with Staples Canada with the alternative of continuing contracts with independent private operators," the FAO said in the statement.
The FAO says it plans to complete a report by early 2025 but access to information could affect when it wraps up its inquiry.
"The FAO must receive timely information from the province to complete the project and delays in receiving information could affect the project timeline. Further, the timeline to complete this project may be impacted if other FAO projects already in progress take longer than anticipated to complete."
Bowman said the ServiceOntario decision was done without a competitive bidding process. Ontario residents get their driver's licences, licence plates, health cards, Ontario Photo Cards and birth certificates among other provincial documents at ServiceOntario centres.
"Your analysis would shed much-needed light on the costs and benefits to the taxpayer from these arrangements; the impact, if any, on unionized jobs in the civil service; and other potential implications," she wrote in a Jan. 29 letter to the FAO.
At Queen's Park on Monday, Bowman said she hopes the inquiry provides answers because it's not clear who is benefiting from the deal.
"They're shutting down small businesses. This is not a government that's working for small business. They're working to make their rich friends richer and we think the government needs to be held accountable," Bowman said.
"This is a situation where this was simply handed to Staples without any transparency, without any clarity with what the objectives were."
Todd McCarthy, Ontario's minister of public and business service delivery, said at Queen's Park on Monday he looks forward to the inquiry and is confident that the deal makes sense.
"In this case, of course, we have more for less. We're saving a million dollars over three years and we're getting more convenience, more access, longer hours."
The longer hours mean the kiosks are open evenings and weekends.
A small town northwest of Thunder Bay, Ont., has become the unlikely home for hundreds of foreign workers, but many may have to leave the community they've embraced after the end of a federal program put in place to fill gaps in Canada's labour market.
There's mixed reaction in Waterloo to an injuction allowing police to detain, arrest and charge anyone who is participating in unsanctioned street parties in that city this weekend.
Diabetes Canada is excited about Prince Edward Island's new pharmacare deal with the federal government, but hopes the province will reevaluate copays on diabetes supplies, says a senior manager with the organization.
After 26 years of accommodating guests from across the world, Faith Embleton says she and her husband Ken are ready to sell their bed and breakfast.
A group of big-name companies including Google, Meta and Dow have signed a pledge to support tripling the world's nuclear energy capacity by 2050, a signal of the technology's growing resurgence in popularity.
Five years on, Toronto-area doctors and public health officials are looking back at what they've learned since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic — and most agree the early experience will prove useful if the city faces another infectious disease crisis.
City staff would like Londoners to take a good look around their home and ask themselves a direct and possibly difficult question: Could everyone in your family survive at home, without leaving and with no other help, for a full 72 hours?
Liberal Leader Mark Carney will officially become Canada's next prime minister within a few hours, taking the reins as the country barrels toward a general election and continues to fend off verbal and economic attacks from U.S. President Donald Trump.
Recent cyberattacks in Newfoundland and Labrador should have been a wake up call for the federal government about the reality of an increasingly hostile world, says one cybersecurity expert.
A recent CBC News analysis found that Nova Scotia is rapidly losing some of its most affordable apartments, but housing experts say there are ways to prevent that.
Premier Susan Holt is defending her decision to not use electricity exports to Maine as leverage against U.S. tariffs, arguing the move might cause long-term pain for New Brunswickers.
Montreal's St. Patrick's Day parade first started on Saint-Paul Street in 1824, and a couple centuries later, this annual tradition is still going strong.
A congregation in Carman, Man., is coming to grips with the loss of their Anglican Lutheran church, a fixture in the community that was ravaged by a fire on Thursday.