...comment from Northumberland Today
http://www.northumberlandtoday.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2090204
Board stiff(s)
Posted By DAN CHRISTIE
Posted 2 days ago
A couple of weeks ago, Premier Dalton McGuinty made it clear the days of hanky-panky at Ontario's Crown corporations were over. McGuinty's warning came as a result of the hanky-panky at e-Health, the hanky-panky at OLG , the hanky-panky at -- well, you get the picture.
Two years ago, in response to a notice I found on GO Transit's website, I applied for a vacant seat on GO's board of directors.
Silly me. There I was thinking what GO Transit's board needed was somebody who knew something about trains. After all, I had been a GO brakeman, a conductor and an engineer and I pretty much knew the train side of GO Transit inside and out.
Silly me.
One of the reasons I applied had to do with a self-described "hockey Mom" from Burlington, Pat Eales, who had taken it upon herself to confront GO Transit over its dismal on-time performance stats. I sympathized with Eales and other GO users whose jobs were at risk because GO wasn't living up to its published schedules. Pat Eales, bearing an 11,000-name petition, made a brave presentation at a crowded board meeting at GO's opulent 20 Bay St. headquarters and, watching her from the hallway, I saw things Pat Eales couldn't see. One thing in particular stood out: the board of directors wasn't listening.
That was when I decided to offer GO Transit my services. If nothing else, I -- as a board member -- would at least have the courtesy to listen to the people who paid my per diem. I might even be able to do something about resolving their concerns.
Silly me.
To get a seat on any of the 630 Ontario Crown agency boards, your application first has to be short-listed by the Public Appointments Secretariat. To get short-listed by the Public Appointments Secretariat, it's probably helpful if you have a seat on the Public Appointments Secretariat -- which lives on the 24th floor of the Whitney Block and I'll be darned if I can find out just who the heck they are. Anyway, I lined up plenty of blue ribbon references and duly submitted my application on time, both by e-mail and snail mail.
The Public Appointments Secretariat never got back to me.
Anyone applying for a seat at GO Transit might first want find out who's already there. The current board's 15 members include a real estate developer, an airport manager, a hospitality expert, a former head of Toronto's Downtown Jazz Festival, the chair of Caribana, a guy who runs his family's printing business and two directors of Humber College. The usual smattering of lawyers and bankers are there, too.
An actual railroader, though, even without pinstriped coveralls and a coal-oil lamp, would stand out like a skunk at a garden party.
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In an effort to shut Pat Eales up, the board offered her what some thought was a seat on the board of directors. Not so. It was an "advisory" position, a fluff-off. Pat Eales took the job briefly but soon realized how little effect the advisory board had and gave it up. She gave up taking the GO, too, when she found a job closer to home.
Still, mostly because of Pat Eales, GO at least does have a passenger advisory board -- made up of nine members, eight on the train side, one looking after buses. They're paid GO fare to and from meetings, given a free lunch and presented with a toy double-decker bus.
All of this is to simply say that if Premier McGuinty is serious about cleaning up the hanky-panky at Ontario's Crown agencies, maybe he'd do well to start, not with the 630 boards of directors themselves, but with the unnamed bureaucrats running the Public Appointments Secretariat.
And - silly me! I actually believe he is serious.
djchrist@cogeco.ca
