Ontario MPP and Mayoral hopeful George Smitherman with Toronto Mayor David Miller.

When David Miller announced that he would not be seeking a third term for mayor, much speculation arose as to who would dare take the role of what is seemingly the worst political job in the country. Almost right away, Ontario Liberal MPP George Smitherman – who was Health minister of Ontario from 2003-2008 until he was shifted to Energy and Infrastructure – put his name in the proverbial hat, though no official candidacy will begin until the new year. Smitherman is MPP for the Toronto Central riding and does have experience in municipal politics, as he was top aide to former Toronto Mayor Barbara Hall. Considering his likely opponents may include John Tory, Smitherman must think he is a shoe-in for the job and has even resigned his portfolio (though not his membership) in anticipation of the race.

Smitherman will be switching political domains on the heels of the red hot eHealth scandal, which saw the resignation of Smitherman’s health portfolio successor David Caplan. Smitherman feels there should be no correlation between himself or the scandal, because eHealth was not created until after he was shuffled to the energy portfolio.

Unfortunately for Smitherman, he was indeed Health minister when eHealth’s predessesor, Smart Systems for Health (SSHA), dispensed million dollar untendered contracts. Created in 2002, SSHA was meant to implement a system of electronic health records to service hospitals and doctors alike. In 2007 – five years after the creation of the SSHA – Deloitte consulting firm released a report showing that there was absolutely no strategic plan in place for implementing the electronic record system. Remarkably, after five years of spending taxpayer money, this large scale project undertaken by the McGuinty government and overseen by Smitherman had absolutely no idea how and when it would begin the process it sought to do. The huge mess of SSHA would soon be turned into eHealth, which proved to be even more costly and just as useless as it’s predecessor.

While a report released by the auditor general last month reviewing the eHealth scandal placed most of the blame on Caplan for allowing former eHealth CEO Sarah Kramer to spend millions of taxpayers’ money on whatever she saw fit, the report also revealed that a great deal of the frivolous spending took place under Smitherman’s watch and that, he too, should be held responsible. Opposition leaders called for Smitherman to resign and even many Liberal insiders were bewildered by the fact that Smitherman was taking no blame while his successor and colleague was forced to resign his portfolio. And now here we find that Smitherman is leaving behind his whole mess of provincial politics to enter a new kind of mess – Toronto’s municipal politics. Some have great faith in Smitherman, believing his “bull in a china shop” attitude will help clean up the horrendous mess that is Toronto city hall and the disjointed relationship of Toronto’s city councilors.

The money wasting aside, what irks me the most is that George Smitherman will not stand up and take responsibility for what is almost entirely his fault. I am extremely bothered by the fact that Smitherman believes himself to be so innocent of the SSHA and eHealth scandal. He is almost righteous about it! While Smitherman was Health MPP, it was perhaps one of his greatest responsibilities to oversee the SSHA’s progress and commitment to project, but instead all that came of it was little to no planning and millions of dollars wasted. How many MRI machines could all that money buy? How about putting that money towards cancer, heart disease or AIDS research? Furthermore, after not one damn good thing came of the SSHA , McGuinty shuffled Smitherman to another position and created eHealth – which was a whole other barrel of wasted taxpayers’ money. If only Smitherman had taken responsibility and implemented the appropriate measures to get the SSHA off the ground, then eHealth would never have been created and Sarah Kramer would not have had the luxury, among other things, to spend over $50,000 renovating her office. Smitherman allowed the SSHA to sit around twiddling their thumbs, blowing provincial money on NO action and NO plan. And this guy thinks he is well suited to be mayor of Toronto? With Smitherman as mayor, David Miller would be given sainthood status. And compared to Smitherman, Miller truly is a saint.

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Tags: david miller, ehealth, george smitherman, toronto mayor

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 at 1:27 pm and is filed under health, Municipal Government, Provincial Government. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.