The Toronto Star has been aggressive in pursuing expenditure stories at Ontario's Ministry of Health and Long-term Care, especially as they relate to the e-health project. This morning's headline, about how senior executives in the ministry are paid, hardly qualifies as news, however. This practice was well known going back to the mid 1990s and I am at a loss to know whether it's condemnable or not.
Bureaucrats skirt rules to hide huge salaries Ontario dodges policy and buries big salaries in hospital budgets. Hefty salaries for some of Ontario's highest paid civil servants – including the deputy health minister, who earned nearly $500,000 last year in salary and taxable benefits – are being channelled through hospitals to skirt government pay guidelines,
link: Bureaucrats skirt rules to hide huge salaries - thestar.com
More than 2 decades ago, it was apparent the ministry was losing some of its better talent to hospitals where salaries were double, or more, than public service pay scales provided. Ministry managers had traditionally been public servants first and health system managers second. Then universities began offering degrees in health administration and certifying a new group of professionals who could move easily between government (the insurer) and providers. The temptation was too great for those who had pursued a graduate degree in health administration not to follow the money.
While hospitals, in particular, were hiring some of the best away from government, those same hospitals frequently by-passed the ministry to lobby the premier and cabinet when their requests for exponential funding increases were turned down by the public service. I won't get into what portion of those increases were intended to pay exorbitant salaries to hospital managers. What followed was a process of seconding hospital administrators to the ministry in a sort of "see of you can do better" challenge and, also, an exercise in helping hospital executives to understand and appreciate the constraints on government. Initially, it was intended that after a year or two in government, these secondees would return to their former employers. A few did, but increasingly they used the ministry experience to advance to even more senior and lucrative positions within government, with other providers and even with other provinces' health systems.
The problem, if it's agreed one exists, is not with the practice of seconding staff. Whether it's appropriate for hospital (and university and education) executives to be paid far more than public servants, or for senior public servants to be paid more than their political masters, is another debate. But when the secondment process is used to inhibit public review of salaries, as The Star seems to allege, it is wrong. Hospital salaries are a matter of public record too, but only insiders would know where to look for a deputy minister or assistance deputy minister on the pay-roll of a hospital. That is not in the public interest.
I would not advocate a return to the war-tiime practice of seconding "dollar men" to government, for the serving-my-country salary of $1 a year. Limiting secondees to the public service approved salary for the position occupied does seem reasonable, however. If the secondees have to pay a price for the experience they gain in government, and the long-term career benefit, so be it.
