Opposition Demanding Minister’s Resignation Over eHealth Scandal
Posted June 8, 2009 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Opposition party leaders at Queen’s Park are screaming one sentence on Monday: fire Health Minister David Caplan.
The demand comes following the dismissal of the president and CEO of eHealth Ontario, which was given millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money to help digitize and create a system of electronic health records.
But when it was revealed Sarah Kramer allegedly gave out more than $5 million in untendered contracts to Liberal friendly firms, the first political shoe began to drop. When evidence surfaced that consultants were allowed to charge taxpayers up to $2,700 a day for minor purchases like tea and snacks, the second shoe followed.
She also gave herself a bonus of $114,000 in addition to her $380,000 a year salary after just a few months in her post.
When she was finally fired on the weekend, accused of mismanaging public funds and given a severance of $317,000, it was as though the entire shoe store was thrown at the Liberals, culminating in demands for Caplan’s head.
So far, Caplan and Premier Dalton McGuinty have been ducking those demands but they’ll only be growing as the opposition keeps up the pressure.
Caplan calls her departure a mutual between Kramer and the eHealth board and he claims to have acted responsibly once the depth of the problem was uncovered. And he insists he won’t step down.
He’s asked the auditor general to speed up a probe into the scandal and promises full disclosure when it’s done.
eHealth was set up last fall and cost Ontario residents $650 million – but no apparent demonstrable work was accomplished.
