STANDING COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT AGENCIES
COMITÉ PERMANENT DES ORGANISMES GOUVERNEMENTAUX
Wednesday 16 April 2008 Mercredi 16 avril 2008
INTENDED APPOINTMENTS
JESSE HAIDAR
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The committee met at 1002 in room 151.
SUBCOMMITTEE REPORT
The Chair (Mrs. Julia Munro): Good morning, and welcome to the standing committee on government agencies. We're going to begin our agenda this morning with the report of the subcommittee on committee business dated Thursday, April 10.
Mrs. Maria Van Bommel: I would move acceptance of the report of the subcommittee of April 10.
The Chair (Mrs. Julia Munro): Any discussion? All those in favour? Opposed? Thank you very much. That's carried.
INTENDED APPOINTMENTS
JESSE HAIDAR
Review of intended appointment, selected by official opposition party: Jesse Haidar, intended appointee as member, Council of the College of Respiratory Therapists of Ontario.
The Chair (Mrs. Julia Munro): We will now move on to the second section of this morning's agenda, beginning with appointments review, and the selection of Mr. Jesse Haidar. Would you come forward, please. Good morning. Welcome to the committee.
Mr. Jesse Haidar: Thank you for having me.
The Chair (Mrs. Julia Munro): We appreciate that you are able to be here today for the standing committee. I would just explain to you that you have a few minutes in which to make comments as you wish, and following that we will have questions from the members of the committee. When you're ready, please begin.
Mr. Jesse Haidar: I'm just going to say a few things about myself. I came to Canada when I was a teenager. I attended school here: I attended university and I attended college. Currently I hold a bachelor of arts in economics and business. I have a diploma from Fanshawe College in data processing, in computers. I took many law courses and many accounting courses.
I raised twin boys by myself as a single father, and presently I own a travel agency. I've owned this travel agency for the last five years. Before that, I used to be a manager of Radio Shack, involved mostly in computers, and I was a district manager with another computer company.
I have many years of experience dealing with the public, dealing with conflicts and dealing with customer complaints. To date, I'd say about 90% of the complaints that I've dealt with I've solved successfully. I'm looking forward to being appointed to the College of Respiratory Therapists, and I want to thank you for your time today.
That's about it. I'm ready for questions.
The Chair (Mrs. Julia Munro): This morning, we will begin with the official opposition.
Ms. Lisa MacLeod: Thank you very much for appearing here today. I admire your being able to raise twin boys on your own.
Mr. Jesse Haidar: Thank you.
Ms. Lisa MacLeod: It's a difficult thing when you have one three-year-old at home and both parents.
Questions will be short today from the official opposition. I guess they're looking for public input on this committee, and you don't necessarily have to have a background in respiratory therapy. Having said that, I want to ask you about your time commitments. Being a member of this council, you will be required to meet several times a year and participate in statutory committees. I'm just wondering if you believe that you'll be able to meet these timelines and meeting dates, because I do see that you are a single dad. You do own and operate a travel agency, and you are very active in your community. If you could just respond, that would be great.
Mr. Jesse Haidar: Right now, one of my kids is at McMaster University, and the other is in Sault Ste. Marie at Algoma U, so they're outside the house. They live in residency right now. I own my own business, as I said. I have people working in the agency. I have no issues coming down to Toronto and spending the time–the quality time, that is.
Ms. Lisa MacLeod: Well, good luck on the committee.
Mr. Jesse Haidar: Thank you.
Mme France Gélinas: Good morning, and welcome to Queen's Park. I just have a few questions. The first one is, what motivated you to select respiratory therapy?
Mr. Jesse Haidar: I went on the public website, and I actually applied to a few different boards. I applied to TICO, since I own a travel agency, and this is the same regulatory board that oversees all the affairs of travel agencies. Unfortunately, there wasn't anything.
I want to give back to the community. I ran for election a year and a half ago because I saw different things in my area that weren't done properly. I always like to give back, help people, and that's basically why I want to be on the board, just to help people, to give back.
Mme France Gélinas: You said you ran for office. At what level did you run?
Mr. Jesse Haidar: A municipal election, ward 12 in London, Ontario.
Mme France Gélinas: I take it you've never sat on that kind of a college board or council?
Mr. Jesse Haidar: Not that kind of a college board. I'm sitting right now as a member of the ALM board, and I'm sitting on the Canadian Arab Society's board as the director of communications.
Mme France Gélinas: You know that the college looks after the therapists throughout the entire province, and they have some goals that they've set for themselves. Through the province, there are a number of their members who are francophone, and they have to offer services in French to their members. Do you have any abilities in French?
M. Jesse Haidar: Je parle le français un peu.
Mme France Gélinas: Ah, oui? Félicitations.
M. Jesse Haidar: Je comprends beaucoup.
Mme France Gélinas: Si je vous pose une question en français—
Mr. Jesse Haidar: No, now you're going too far. I was educated in French in Lebanon. As you know, Lebanon is a French colony, so up to about grade 10, before I came to Canada, most of my education was in French. When I came to Canada, I switched to English. I took a French course at Western. All I need is practice. If I practise it, I'll speak it fluently because I have the base for it.
Mme France Gélinas: I'm just curious to see, do you have any knowledge of the health care issues facing respiratory therapists in northern communities?
Mr. Jesse Haidar: To be honest with you, I really don't know that much about the problems they have up north right now, but I believe that everybody is entitled to have the best care that's available in Ontario.
Mme France Gélinas: Do you have any knowledge of the special requirements of the First Nations?
Mr. Jesse Haidar: No, I don't.
Mme France Gélinas: Those are my questions. Thank you
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The Chair (Mrs. Julia Munro): We'll go to the government.
Mrs. Maria Van Bommel: I also want to say thank you very much for coming in today, Mr. Haidar. How was the drive in from London?
Mr. Jesse Haidar: It was good. It was good yesterday.
Mrs. Maria Van Bommel: I'm happy to hear that. I have to move that way.
Mr. Jesse Haidar: No construction, no accidents on the 403.
Mrs. Maria Van Bommel: Good. No pigs running around?
Mr. Jesse Haidar: No.
Mrs. Maria Van Bommel: Excellent. I'm always happy to hear that.
Mr. Jesse Haidar: It was a nice day for it too.
Mrs. Maria Van Bommel: Thank you very much. I have no further questions.
The Chair (Mrs. Julia Munro): Thank you very much for coming here this morning. We appreciate the time you've taken to be here with us. That concludes this part of the process.
Mr. Jesse Haidar: Thank you for taking the time.
ANDY MOLINO
Review of intended appointment, selected by official opposition party: Andy Molino, intended appointee as member, Ontario Health Quality Council.
The Chair (Mrs. Julia Munro): Our next interview will be with Dr. Andy Molino. He is here as an intended appointee as member of the Ontario Health Quality Council.
Good morning and welcome to the committee. As you would know from our previous presenter, you have a few minutes in which to make comments as you wish, and then we'll have questions from the committee. Please begin.
Dr. Andy Molino: Thank you very much. I do have a very brief statement that I would like to make, but before I do that, I wanted to thank the committee for the privilege of appearing before you here this morning. I'm certain that you've received a copy of my resumé, but I thought I'd quickly run through it just to explain some of the various relevant work experiences I've had, to give you a better idea of who I am and how I might be able to help the council.
I was trained originally as a psychologist, and in fact, I did my post-doctoral work internship in clinical psychology through the Ontario Ministry of Health and Surrey Place Centre, which is just a couple of blocks away from here. It's hard for me to believe that that was nearly 35 years ago.
After my post-doc, I began my professional career as a clinical psychologist with the government of Ontario. My first job was as a ward psychologist at Brockville Psychiatric Hospital.
I spent about 13 years with the Ontario government, first with the Ministry of Health for quite a short period of time, and then with the Ministry of Community and Social Services. For most of those 13 years, I worked as a senior manager, administering either direct-operated services, such as schedule 1 inpatient facilities for the government, or coordinating the delivery of social services through transfer payment agencies, such as children's aid societies, general hospitals, homes for the aged, and so on. Most of those 13 years were spent in southeastern Ontario, first in Brockville, and then in Ottawa.
In 1986, my career took quite a dramatic shift, when I was recruited by the federal government into the Department of Consumer and Corporate Affairs. At that time, I was offered a position of director general, consumer standards and regulations. While in that position, I was responsible for providing functional direction to three major divisions, with about 1,700 employees from coast to coast. Those divisions included product safety, consumer products, which regulated packaging and labelling, and legal metrology, which is now Measurement Canada.
Then, in 1988, I was recruited by another federal agency, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, also known as NSERC. It was, and still is, the largest Canadian research-granting council. At that time, back in 1988, NSERC was responsible for allocating over half a billion dollars in research grants and scholarships to Canadian researchers and graduate students. I went to NSERC to assume the position of director general, corporate systems and services, where I was responsible for overseeing all corporate services, including administration information services, human resources and finance, including oversight of the half billion dollars that was being spent by researchers.
After over 20 years in public service, working primarily in management positions, I found that my professional interests started to shift more towards organizational development, organizational theory and executive development. So, at the end of 1994, I left public service and co-founded a small consulting company in Ottawa. Over the last 14 years, my primary focus has been in the areas of executive and organizational assessment and development and change management. I do a fair amount of executive coaching myself and organizational consulting to both public and private sector organizations both large and small. The firm in which I am currently a senior partner has developed a number of programs to train managers, executives and executive coaches.
To date, I've had no involvement with the Ontario Health Quality Council. I was actually barely aware of the council until I was approached last fall by the current chairman, who asked me to consider sitting as a member of the board. Since then, I've tried to familiarize myself with the council, its mandate and its work, by reading whatever I could get my hands on about the council.
Looking back over the last 35 years or so, I believe that the various jobs I've had in both the public and private sectors have given me a certain amount of expertise in areas such as governance, accountability, public finance, human resource development and change management. I believe that these are some of the areas where I could be of some assistance to the council, and I would be honoured to serve as a member of its board. Thank you.
The Chair (Mrs. Julia Munro): Thank you very much. We'll go to Ms. Gélinas of the NDP for questions to start.
Mme France Gélinas: Good morning. Thank you for coming. You said that you were approached to consider a position on the council. Besides being asked, what interests you about the Ontario Health Quality Council?
Dr. Andy Molino: Well, I think that when the chairman called me, his timing was impeccable. It had been about a month since I was out of hospital for surgery myself. I had just been through as a significant consumer of the health care system, so I think that the quality of health service in Ontario and Canada is really important. I felt that it could be a way of giving back, perhaps, a little bit, because I really felt that I was very fortunate in the way I was treated in the system.
Mme France Gélinas: Running your own business, I'm sure, means that you have to be available to do the coaching that you've explained to us. How do you see the time commitment for that committee?
Dr. Andy Molino: I don't think it will be a problem. Since I do run my own business, I have a certain amount of flexibility in terms of scheduling appointments and so on. I've been led to believe that there will be up to 10 meetings a year, plus some reading, preparatory work and so on. That shouldn't be a problem.
Mme France Gélinas: You know that the council serves the whole province, which means that they would be serving the francophone population. Do you have any ability in French?
Dr Andy Molino: Je parle français aussi, oui.
Mme France Gélinas: Vous parlez français ? Est-ce que vous parlez suffisamment pour que je vous pose une question ?
Dr Andy Molino: Je peux essayer une réponse.
Mme France Gélinas: Okay. On va en essayer une facile. Votre expérience est surtout dans le sud de la province. Est-ce que vous avez des connaissances des réalités du nord de la province ?
Dr Andy Molino: Non, pas du tout, malheureusement.
Mme France Gélinas: Et du côté des Premières Nations?
Dr Andy Molino: Non.
Mme France Gélinas: Okay. Those were my questions.
The Chair (Mrs. Julia Munro): All right. Thank you very much. We'll move on.
Mrs. Maria Van Bommel: Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Dr. Molino, for coming in today. It's certainly a trip from Ottawa, and I appreciate your being here. We have no further questions or comments.
Ms. Lisa MacLeod: I will just be making a few comments; then my colleague Mr. Hillier will be asking the questions.
Welcome. You're a resident of Nepean—Carleton. You're a—
Dr. Andy Molino: Of your riding.
Ms. Lisa MacLeod: You're a Barrhavenite, though. That's wonderful. So you come from good stock. I'll just quickly say congratulations for the work you're doing with St. Patrick's parish in Fallowfield. I know that you worked with Villa Marconi, which is a stand up organization in the city of Ottawa, as well as the Youth Services Bureau of Ottawa. I know that my friend Alex Munter's doing some great work there, and I appreciate the work that you've done for our community to make it a better place. So thank you, welcome, and good luck.
Dr. Andy Molino: Thank you, Ms. MacLeod.
The Chair (Mrs. Julia Munro): Mr. Hillier.
Mr. Randy Hillier: Thank you very much for being here. Just a few questions.
You mentioned that you were approached by the chairman of the board for this position. Have you had any other discussions or interviews with people in the Ministry of Health regarding this appointment?
Dr. Andy Molino: The only contacts I've had were on Monday afternoon, when people from the ministry called to give me some advice in terms of how to prepare for this meeting.
Mr. Randy Hillier: Okay, but no interview or anything of that nature?
Dr. Andy Molino: No.
Mr. Randy Hillier: Are you active politically? Are you a member of any political party?
Dr. Andy Molino: I have a membership in the federal Liberal Party.
Mr. Randy Hillier: Do you also contribute to—
Dr. Andy Molino: No, I do not.
Mr. Randy Hillier: No contributions?
On health care: Health care is in the news quite often these days, and one of the roles of the health quality council is to monitor and report and improve health care. Have you any pre-set thoughts or ideas that you could share with the committee on your views on how to improve the delivery of health care?
Dr. Andy Molino: One of the things that really interested me when I was reading the various reports of the council—the point is stressed several times—is that in order to improve the system, you have to have good data; you have to have good information. That resonates with me, because in the work that we do when we work with executives and when we work with organizations, one of the tenets of organizational development or executive development is that you need to have good data. You need to have evidence-based information. If you want to improve, for example, as an executive, as an individual, self-awareness really is the first point. Unless you're self-aware, unless you have good data and good information, it's very hard for you to know what to work on. That part really resonates with me. It's one of the areas that I'll be very interested in getting involved in.
Mr. Randy Hillier: That's collecting the data, and of course, I agree 100%. If you don't have the knowledge, it's pretty hard to make an informed decision afterwards. As far as philosophically, are there any other thoughts that you'd share on how we can improve this conundrum that we have in health care?
Dr. Andy Molino: I'm not coming in with any preconceived notions. I think I'll wait and see how things go.
Mr. Randy Hillier: Okay. Those are all my questions. Thank you very much.
The Chair (Mrs. Julia Munro): Thank you very much for being here with us today. We appreciate your coming forward.
Dr. Andy Molino: Thank you very much.
The Chair (Mrs. Julia Munro): The next point on our agenda will be with concurrences. We will now consider the intended appointment of Jesse Haidar, intended appointee as member, Council of the College of Respiratory Therapists of Ontario.
Mrs. Maria Van Bommel: I move concurrence in the appointment of Jesse Haidar.
Mrs. Liz Sandals: Recorded vote, please.
The Chair (Mrs. Julia Munro): Yes. Any discussion?
Ayes
Brown, Flynn, Gélinas, Hillier, MacLeod, Ramsay, Sandals, Van Bommel.
The Chair (Mrs. Julia Munro): The motion is carried.
We will now consider the intended appointment of Andy Molino, intended appointee as member, Ontario Health Quality Council.
Mrs. Maria Van Bommel: I move concurrence in the appointment of Dr. Andy Molino.
The Chair (Mrs. Julia Munro): Any discussion? If not, all in favour?
Mrs. Liz Sandals: Recorded vote, please.
Ayes
Brown, Flynn, Gélinas, Hillier, MacLeod, Ramsay, Sandals, Van Bommel.
The Chair (Mrs. Julia Munro): The motion is carried. That concludes—
Mr. Michael A. Brown: You didn't ask for opposed.
The Chair (Mrs. Julia Munro): I saw it was unanimous; I'm sorry. Opposed? The motion is carried.
That concludes our business on intended appointments. Thank you very much.
The committee adjourned at 1022.
CONTENTS
Wednesday 16 April 2008
Subcommittee report A-65
Intended appointments A-65
Mr. Jesse Haidar A-65
Dr. Andy Molino A-66
STANDING COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT AGENCIES
Chair / Présidente
Mrs. Julia Munro (York—Simcoe PC)
Vice-Chair / Vice-Présidente
Ms. Lisa MacLeod (Nepean—Carleton PC)
Mr. Michael A. Brown (Algoma—Manitoulin L)
Mr. Kevin Daniel Flynn (Oakville L)
Mme France Gélinas (Nickel Belt ND)
Mr. Randy Hiller (Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington PC)
Ms. Lisa MacLeod (Nepean—Carleton PC)
Mrs. Julia Munro (York—Simcoe PC)
Mr. David Ramsay (Timiskaming—Cochrane L)
Mrs. Liz Sandals (Guelph L)
Mrs. Maria Van Bommel (Lambton—Kent—Middlesex L)
Clerk / Greffier
Mr. Douglas Arnott
Staff / Personnel
Mr. Larry Johnston, research officer,
Research and Information Services