Globe & Mail: 2008 May 10
Murray Campbell
TORONTO -- There are promises kept and promises broken but Dalton McGuinty's pledge to provide millions of new books to Ontario's school libraries is a promise in the making.
Last September, in the midst of his campaign for re-election, the Ontario Premier stood beside Heather Reisman and said that her company, Indigo Books and Music, had agreed to provide 1.7 million books a year at cost to elementary-school libraries.
Nearly eight months later, none of the $80-million promised over four years has flowed and the Ministry of Education is only now consulting the librarians, retail bookshops and book wholesalers who had profound misgivings about giving Indigo what amounted to an untendered contract to be a sole-source supplier of school library books. The pushback means the scheme, with Indigo playing a lesser role, will not start until some time in the autumn.
There's little doubt that Mr. McGuinty's credentials as a supporter of public education were burnished by his appearance with Ms. Reisman, coming as it did at a time when Progressive Conservative Leader John Tory was mired in a gumbo over his promise to provide financial aid to faith-based schools.
The initiative came together last summer. Government officials, aware of Indigo's Love of Reading Foundation, which had donated about $4.5-million to elementary schools across Canada, thought the retailer was a natural partner for its plan to bolster school libraries that had been ignored when educational financing was overhauled in the 1990s.
The industry built around school libraries, surprised by Mr. McGuinty's announcement, reacted quickly. "The industry blew up steam," said Arthur Gale, president of wholesaler S and B Books Ltd. "Our concern," added Susan Dayus, executive director of the Canadian Booksellers Association, "was that a sole supplier would be servicing all the elementary-school libraries and we felt that wasn't good for the libraries."
The argument made to ministry officials (after the election) was that school libraries need a variety of sources to build a collection. Ms. Reisman was respected for her literacy work, but the fear was that Indigo would squeeze out retailers and wholesalers and that it wouldn't be able to provide regional or specialty books or satisfy the need that some smaller schools have for the cataloguing services that places like S and B provide.
None of the controversy about the Indigo scheme stuck to Mr. McGuinty. There was some comment that Ms. Reisman is a long-time Liberal supporter. But the campaign spotlight remained on the Conservative Leader.
The issue still rankles Mr. Tory. As he tracks the mutation of the promise, he wonders what processes were followed and what questions were asked about whether giving Indigo an exclusive contract was the smart thing to do. "When you make these promises in kind of a superficial way just to try and buy yourself a few votes and make people happy for a couple of weeks, you get results like this," he said.
Annie Kidder, head of People for Education, has similar concerns. She believes the Liberal campaign team didn't understand the ramifications of the promise and she warns that school libraries are too important to get mixed up in election politics. "We shouldn't be writing policy on the back of an envelope," she said.
Education Minister Kathleen Wynne says books will get to libraries when she finds a way to introduce flexibility into Mr. McGuinty's promise. "It's just a matter of getting the procurement process right," she said. Better late than never.
