By Tony Dean

Some reflections on the Elliot Lake mall collapse and labour reform, two issues that dominated the deadlines last week:

What a tough and emotionally wrenching couple of weeks for the people of Elliot Lake and especially for the friends and relatives of the two women who tragically lost their lives. We saw at the same time a wonderful demonstration of the community's strength and resilience.

There will be many post-mortems in the wake of the roof collapse, including one promised by Premier Dalton McGuinty on the emergency response. This will likely include a look at inter-agency collaboration and the lines of accountability, with a focus on who is in charge when an emergency is declared.

It will also look at the issue of resources and ensuring the right mix of human and mechanical capacity. But it should also take a look at crisis communications because it was communications – perhaps as much as anything else – that touched off community concerns and ultimately prompted the Premier's involvement on the phone lines.

Of course crises are always easier to manage in hindsight. Highly skilled emergency and rescue personnel were on the scene quickly and the safety of rescuers is always paramount in emergency responses.

Ontario's emergency management system is not broken. But critical systems like this one always benefit from periodic scrutiny and invariably can be improved.

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It was no surprise really that proposed labour law changes in the budget bill almost brought the House down again. Andrea Horwath played the budget talks to great advantage in the context of a minority government – including keeping the views of her union colleagues in perspective.

But the labour changes – relatively mild though they were – presented CUPE and OPSEU with a rallying cry and they used this leverage effectively.

Two thoughts on this. First, it demonstrates how tough public sector reform can be in a minority government.

Second, PC Leader Tim Hudak's white paper on labour reforms released this past week shows that there is little chance of a meeting of Tory and Liberal minds in this area. Hudak's proposals represent a sharper attack on trade unions than anything envisaged by previous Conservative governments, including the one led by Mike Harris.

More on this in a future column.

Tony Dean is a former Secretary of the Cabinet and Head of the Ontario Public Service. He is currently a professor at the University of Toronto’s School of Public Policy and Governance and continues to advise governments on public policy.

Tony Dean: A time for scrutiny

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