Leading By Example

Does Comrade Miller and The Politburo toe the mark when it comes to ethical behaviour?

Raising the ethics bar
April 10, 2007

It is troubling to learn that Toronto's civil servants need more ethics awareness training despite the recent scandals dealing with computer leasing, cronyism and nepotism.

A strong public demand for clean government evidently has failed to register with all the city's employees.

That needs to change.

Some officials still have difficulty comprehending what a conflict is, Auditor General Jeff Griffiths said after releasing a report on last year's operation of the city's fraud and waste hotline. He called for more training, including an online site where employees in doubt about the rules could find clear guidance.

The number of complaints dropped to 503, from 577 in 2005, but several outrageous examples of blatant misconduct were uncovered.

These included "nonexistent" controls over use of a city corporate credit card; an under-the-table swimming program run by a city worker for personal profit; water meter tampering at several large apartment buildings; missing money; misuse of city cellphones, and several cases of employees caught in a conflict-of-interest.

The fraud and waste hotline is clearly making a difference. To the credit of those policing the system, several city hall employees have been fired. In a few cases, criminal charges were laid.

But it remains impossible to know how much additional fraud, abuse and ignorance of the rules is still going undetected. To help uncover other fraud cases, city officials should redouble their self-policing efforts, including increased publicity for the city's fraud and waste hotline.

In addition, better ethics training should be made available for those workers still unsure about what constitutes proper behaviour.

No bureaucracy the size of Toronto's will ever be completely free of people taking advantage of the system. But more could be done to deter those driven by greed, or led astray by ignorance.