this post was submitted on 12 Jan 2024
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Ford government to pay for Staples retrofit as retailer looks to 'monetize' ServiceOntario (toronto.citynews.ca)
submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] Prewash_Required 8 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Service Ontario already was private, and always has been. I don't approve of this move, but only because it corporatizes a small business model.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I took a little look into this and based on that I think you are correct that Service Ontario was already significantly privatized prior to this move (which I'll admit I wasn't aware of), but it has not always been completely private.

Here are excerpts from a 2014 post from OPSEU (https://opseu.org/information/general/serviceontario-the-straight-facts/9956/):

The McGuinty government likes to claim that two-thirds of ServiceOntario is already privatized. While two-thirds of ServiceOntario’s retail counters are privately run, claiming that two-thirds of ServiceOntario is already privatized is a gross oversimplification. This claim ignores the publicly run backbone of the organization. The components of ServiceOntario directly operated by the province include:

  • 87 public counters across Ontario
  • 9 contact centers that answer 10 million calls annually
  • Online services handling close to 10 million transactions annually
  • Mailrooms processing 22 million items annually

ServiceOntario employs about 2400 people that are direct employees of the province. OPSEU represents approximately 1850 of those employees.

[–] Prewash_Required 7 points 10 months ago

You're right, I'm guilty of oversimplification based on out of date information. I last worked in that field 20 years ago. I should have stuck to the still-accurate point that privatization has long been prevalent when it comes to licensing in Ontario, so it's not a new thing this government is doing. Driver testing was provincially-run, but it was fully privatized in the early 2000s. Thanks for the fact-checking.