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.
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.
You’re right, I’m guilty of oversimplification based on out of date information.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.
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.
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/):
You’re right, I’m guilty of oversimplification based on out of date information.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.