Well, hundreds of millions of dollars were wasted in Ontario by the Ministry of Health in their eHealth program, which was supposed to create electronic health records.

In response to this report from the Auditor General of Ontario, the Minister of Health has resigned. Premier Dalton McGuinty at a press conference held a few moments ago said something to the effect of

"This is our parliamentary tradition. It is the current Minister, the one who is at bat, who takes responsibility for what happens."

When asked if earlier ministers of health should also be punished, he said that he didn't think that would be fair.

Now, I wrote a paper in my honours political science degree in which I read a bit too much about Ministerial Responsibility. That is the name of the principle that if something goes seriously wrong in a department of government, the current minister of that department resigns in order to ensure accountability to the public, regardless of whether that minister had any direct or indirect responsibility for what went wrong.

I also read a very interesting paper that suggests that Ministerial Responsibility was a myth. A political scientist had done a survey of all the resignations of ministers in a given period, and found exactly zero situations in which a minister had resigned for a problem that they had not been directly involved in creating.

So I was surprised to see that Ontario seems to adhere to a principle that has not been adhered to in living memory.

Personally, I'm glad. But from the reaction that the media had to McGuinty's explanation of the tradition of ministerial accountability suggests to me that many people don't know that this tradition exists, and that they might interpret to mean that the former health minister had some direct responsibility for the problems.

What do you think? Vote in the poll on the left, and comment below on whether you think Ministerial Accountability actually exists in Canada, or whether it should.