ONTC consultant paid huge bucks

The Ontario government paid Roy Hains at least $773,000 during the last 22 months, baytoday.ca has learned.

Hains, who runs his company RFH Associates out a Bay Street office in Toronto, has been working for the Ontario Northland Transportation Commission as a consultant since September 2001.

His primary responsibility has been the implementation of Ontario Northland Railway’s service improvement plan. As well, Hains was the lead negotiator with Canadian National, when the railway had put in its bid to purchase the ONR.

The deal collapsed when former Northern Development and Mines Minister Jim Wilson could not obtain certain job security guarantees from CN and walked away from the table.

“What Hains has and is being paid is absolutely scandalous,” said CAW Local 103 president Brian Stevens.

"We had strong suspicions that the Hains Plan presented to the ONTC Commission earlier this month had more to do with securing lucrative consulting contracts, than it did with improving customer service for residents and businesses of Northeastern Ontario.”

Contract can always be terminated
Hains denies the allegation, saying all the work he's done for the ONTC has been guided strictly by the principals of the service improvment plan, "economic development, to retain and grow employment and to improve customer service and our competitiveness."

Besides, Hains, said, "my contracted can always be terminated.”
His contract, he adds, was awarded to him, "after going through a competitive process and being interviewed by the ONTC."

“In my opinion the ONTC has received high value because I am charging them my Northern Ontario rates, and I receive much higher rates in Southern Ontario,” Hains said.


The payments, Hains said, include GST and reimbursement for his out of pocket expenses.

“If I have to fly to Ottawa to see the Competition Bureau then my plane fare is submitted as an expense,” Hains said.

Amount grows to $900,000
New Northern Development and Mines Minister Rick Bartolucci, who is currently being briefed about the ONTC, told baytoday.ca he was unaware of Hains' contract.

A document obtained by baytoday.ca lists 22 invoices totalling $772,679.92 submitted by Hains to the province under the RFH Associates title.

The highest invoice is for $113,233.20 and the lowest is $18,451, for an average of $35,121 per month. That amount grows to around $900,000 if the September to December, 2001 period is included at the average monthly rate, although the document only goes back as far as 2002.

On the other hand, former ONTC CEO and president John Wallace received an average yearly salary of $150,000 between 1996 and 2000 as a fulltime employee, as listed on the Ontario Finance Ministry salary disclosure web site.

The site discloses the salaries of public employees in the province who make $100,000 or more per year. Hains isn’t on the list because he is a consultant.

“There's no value to the taxpayer in retaining a high paid Toronto based consultant who works at this a couple of days a week,” Stevens said.

He added that provincial auditor Erik Peters has exposed “the depth of the red ink left by the Harris/Eves governments and contracts like this have simply added to that drain of the public purse. Now that his political masters are out, it’s time for Hains to hit the road."

CAW not buying in
Ironically the other five unions at the ONTC say they want Hains to be retained, at least until a new CEO is found.

“We think there’s more value having somebody who knows the corporation to the extent Roy does,” said Phil Koning, spokesman for the five ONTC unions.

“He has been able to sort through the complexities of this organization over the last couple of years and he’s made some moves we think are proper. We don’t want to delay the service improvement process while we wait for new person to come in and try to learn the ropes.”

But, Stevens said, the total CAW leadership and his members aren’t buying in.

The union contends that the Hains plan, the first business plan in 101 years shared with union officials in this manner, Stevens said, "was exclusively designed by Roy Hains to gain internal support in his attempt to leverage an extension to his lucrative consultant contract.”

"We are calling upon Liberal government to put in place leadership that is committed to the ONTC, an election pledge made by the Liberals to install a new board and new
mandate.”

Bartolucci said no decisions would be made about Hains until he has seen and analyzed the business plan, which the ONTC is submitting to him today.