On April 19th, Lt.-Gov. Hillary Weston will deliver the Speech from the Throne outlining the Harris government's vision as it marches toward the next election, expected in 2003. And this week, the Premier himself has hinted at one of the initiatives to be included in the Throne Speech: Local accountability.

It's no secret that Queen's Park is now perpetually perturbed with municipalities, school boards, universities and hospitals and their endless Oliver Twist-like cries for more money. All together now in your best British orphanage accent, "Please sir, can I have some more?"

To be fair, there is no doubt that part of this renewed focus on making Ontario's "public sector partners" - as the Premier refers to them - account for their spending is to find ways not to give them money.

Let's be frank, the Tories have been on autopilot since 1995. Most assumptions and forecasts were based on never-ending tax revenues from a booming economy. Now that economic growth has slowed, the government is squeezed and perhaps unable to fully deliver on promised tax cuts along with their campaign promises for increases to health and education funding.

But the province's cash crunch is not the only reason for this vigour to place local agencies under the microscope.

The other reason is on of pure financial accountability. Last November, the provincial Auditor General (AG), Erik Peters, noted that over 50%, or $30 billion, of annual government expenditures are funnelled through arms-length or private agencies. However, these agencies do not fall under the purview of the AG's office. In other words, Ontario taxpayers have no assurance that they are receiving value - through reports from the AG - for the 50% of their tax dollars that are disbursed through these agencies.

Worse still, while we can submit Freedom of Information requests to the provincial government, hospitals are technically defined as private corporations and as such, are exempt from Freedom of Information legislation.

So it appears as though the Harris government will resurrect measures that were first proposed a few years back in the Public Sector Accountability Act, an act that was never implemented. And I'll place even odds that a report card format will be the vehicle of choice for this enhanced accountability and measurement framework.

At the municipal level, the province is already looking at services such as water and will compare and contrast the quality of different cities' drinking water and what it costs each city to treat and distribute water. Other services being measured include sewage, garbage collection, fire and police services, and the costs of government administration. And cities must submit these measures to the province by the end of this month.

Turning to the post-secondary sector, it would not be surprising to see comparisons of institutions on their ratio of administration to classroom costs. Or a ranking of their success in placement of graduates and average starting salaries.

Finally, let's look at hospital boards. Here is where the proverbial fecal matter (you may also use the common four-letter word starting with "s" and ending with "t") could really hit the fan. As a former hospital board member myself, I was always the agitator for more accountability and transparency.

Indeed, it was one of the reasons I resigned from the Ottawa Hospital board in 1999. In my professional capacity as an advocate for taxpayer accountability with the CTF, I demand transparency from public officials. Yet in my community capacity as a member of a somewhat secretive board, I could not hold myself to my own standard, the choice was clear: Leave on principle or sit as a hypocrite.

Now hospital boards across the province could be forced to disclose full and proper minutes of all board and related committee meetings as well a complete reporting of hospital debt structures, procurement strategies that are skewed with tied-giving/donation activities along with internal audits of hospital cleanliness, not to mention summary reports of patient grievances and lawsuits pending against hospitals. What a step forward for democracy this would be!

It's high time to admit that our local institutions are competing with each other for limited public funds. So measures of accountability that single out the best and the worst of them are valuable for the provincial government and taxpayers alike. In science, the process of looking at the total outcomes of effort as opposed to a simple catalogue of inputs is called an "evidence-based" approach.

Our local institutions better start gathering their evidence; they'll soon have to present it to taxpayers.