An Ontario government lawyer warned against approving former ORNGE boss Chris Mazza’s public-private scheme for the air ambulance service, according to leaked documents.

Progressive Conservative MPP Frank Klees said that revelation was found in a “banker’s box” full of internal cabinet memos given to him by “front-line people in the Ministry of Health.”

“This weekend, I just happened to come across a document prepared for management board of cabinet by the emergency health services branch of the Ministry of Health dated October 15, 2004,” Klees (Newmarket-Aurora) told the house Monday.

“That document could not be more clear — someone at a very high level was manipulating the Mazza scheme through the cabinet approvals process against the advice and warnings of senior civil servants,” he charged.

In a four-page legal opinion, the Ministry of Heath legal services branch cites a litany of problems with the internal “MB20” memo outlining the air ambulance proposal.

“I continue to have serious concerns respecting the tone and substance of the MB20,” ministry lawyer Mel Springman wrote in the memo, which several other senior bureaucrats had signed off on.

“Whatever one may think of the final recommendation in the MB20 on the air ambulance reform, the various incarnations of that document have consistently stood on rather flimsy, indeed sometimes misleading grounds,” said Springman.

“Perhaps most critically, there are no serious alternatives to the final recommendation.”

But George Smitherman, who was health minister at the time, insisted Monday that “as far as I know” he and his staff never saw the legal memo.

Smitherman noted the accompanying “sign-off sheet” indicates it was reviewed only by bureaucrats — not political aides in the minister’s office.

Further complicating matters, Malcolm Bates, director of the emergency health services branch, disputed Springman’s conclusions in a subsequent letter on Nov. 1, 2004 that was obtained by the Star.

“These comments are not legal advice, but are business advice with which we disagree. In some cases these comments are factually incorrect,” wrote Bates.

“The MB20 sets out reasonable options and a clear analysis. The ministry will retain its governance of the program and only a small statutory change to the definitions section of the Ambulance Act is necessary to empower the new non-profit corporation,” he concluded.

Health Minister Deb Matthews, who was a rookie MPP at the time and not yet in cabinet, said she couldn’t speak to the kerfuffle.

“As soon as I became aware that there were problems at ORNGE, I moved in a very aggressive manner to fix those problems,” said Matthews, referring to moves made last winter after a sweeping Star investigation.

“It’s clear that with the benefit of hindsight we would have had a stronger performance agreement,” the minister said of the doomed arrangement with Mazza, who lost his $1.4 million-a-year job after the for-profit ORNGE company that paid him was forced into bankruptcy.

“It’s appalling what happened at ORNGE. It is completely unacceptable. The OPP are investigating — that doesn’t happen very often,” she said, stressing proposed legislation would fix the problems once and for all.

“We didn’t have the ability, for example, to send in a supervisor. That’s something I can do at a hospital. If a hospital is not performing the way I think it should be I can send in a supervisor. Once this legislation is passed I will have that authority when it comes to ORNGE as well.”

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Still, Klees said the Springman memo is proof that Liberals’ claims of a lack of oversight for ORNGE are specious because the alarm was being sounded almost eight years ago.

“It gives 15 specific reasons why the Mazza scheme should never have been approved,” he said of the private-public arrangement the Grits eventually endorsed.

“It must have been political interference.”

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