The front desk in the lobby of the new City Hall building is shown, Tuesday, May 15, 2018.
We have been curious about the discussion of an Auditor-General for Windsor during the municipal election campaign.
We tried to understand why there were so many candidates (roughly half of all registered in ward races) calling for an AG for Windsor, while — as re-elected Mayor Drew Dilkens pointed out at the Chamber of Commerce debate — only three of 444 Ontario municipalities have one. AGs are authorized by the Municipal Act, section 223, but they are not required (the exception is Toronto, for which an AG is mandated by the City of Toronto Act).
Mayor Dilkens’ position during the campaign was that an AG for Windsor is unnecessary because PricewaterhouseCoopers can provide the same services as an internal auditor, and in fact has already produced many reports for council since being engaged in 2012. A 2015 administration report to council recommended remaining with the contracting-out model.
Yet a key difference between the two functions is that an internal audit acts as a resource to the city’s administration, while an…
