Do we need all these consultants?

If you’re a cautious civil servant intent upon shielding yourself from criticism, it’s almost irresistible to spend some tax money to cover your behind. That’s done by the simple route of launching a study of some or all of the actions you take. You just hire a consultant and you are covered if you follow the advice. It’s unnecessary except for the protection of a civil servant and it robs the city of funds it could otherwise use.

Politicians can be guilty of this as well, though likely less frequently.

There’s another even more disreputable use of consultants and that’s to pay out graft. Not only civil servants but also politicians can use this technique to dish out tax money to friends and relatives.

Toronto has a huge number of high-paid employees. There ought to be enough of them to do much of the work farmed out to consultants. Yet city hall continues to spend millions of dollars each year on outside consultants.

So it’s no surprise that right-wing Etobicoke Councilor Rob Ford has taken a look at the list for 2006 and raised a number of questions about those expenses. Though he’s an elected representative of the people, Ford says he had to take a sub rosa route to get the numbers collected in a large handful of papers broken down by department.

The figures just aren’t available in a useful format for citizens—or even councilors—to get a real sense of what’s being spent on whom by whom for whom, says Ford.

That’s very handy if there’s something to hide. At city hall the freedom-of-information (FOI) regime has been compromised under the Miller reign. Sovietized, one might conclude.

A lot of the consultant fees and the studies that accompanied them are in bureaucrat-ese or consultant-ese. Some are remarkable, as Ford points out, for instilling a sense of wonder. The parking authority spent a bundle on marketing consultations. “What are they selling?” asks Ford. “Parking? You don’t have to promote that.” Perhaps they’re hoping to promote Green P memorabilia like T-shirts and beer mugs.

Some expenditures dazzle you. The city spent about $300,000 on a study to see how to double the numbers of trees in the city. It didn’t water a single one of our suffering trees. It didn’t plant a single tree. It produced a pile of paper. Well, that comes from trees. Dead ones.

A critical, open look at how much the under-funded city wastes paying outsiders to do what insiders should do is overdue. But let’s hope they don’t hire consultants to do that job.