Health Ministry’s $428,000 man Saad Rafi gets a contract extension

The highest paid mandarin at Queen’s Park has quietly been reappointed to his $428,000-a-year job.

Saad Rafi, the deputy minister of health, was awarded a contract extension of up to three years with an order in council personally signed by Premier Dalton McGuinty at cabinet on June 27.

Rafi, who spent Monday at the side of Health Minister Deb Matthews for their joint grilling at the hands of the legislature’s estimates committee, made $427,551 last year.

Matthews, by comparison, earned $165,851 while McGuinty took home $208,974.

The deputy minister for health even pulled in more than his boss, Peter Wallace, the secretary of cabinet who runs the Ontario public service. Wallace made $343,473 in 2011.

Despite problems at eHealth Ontario and the ORNGE air ambulance service, Rafi is well regarded by his political masters at Queen’s Park.

In the spring, they were worried he would bolt to head Infrastructure Ontario, the private-public partnership agency that had been headed by David Livingston, now McGuinty’s chief of staff. Livingston earned $366,057 as infrastructure czar.

Sources said Matthews and the premier were deeply concerned Rafi might depart to become president and CEO of the arm’s-length organization as he had been previously been seconded to its predecessor, Ontario SuperBuild Corporation as vice-president of public-private partnerships.

Last Friday, former McGuinty aide Bert Clark was named president and CEO of Infrastructure Ontario effective Aug. 7.

Clark, who was senior policy adviser to the premier from 2003 to 2005, is son of TD Bank president and CEO Ed Clark, who is close to McGuinty.

The younger Clark made headlines in 2008 when he offered a $15,000 reward for the return of his dog Huckleberry. The chocolate Labrador was eventually found.

Rafi took over health, by far the largest department in government, in February 2010 after then-deputy minister Ron Sapsford resigned for “personal reasons” in the wake of the eHealth debacle.

Sapsford is now a registered lobbyist for the Ontario Medical Association, which represents 25,000 doctors and is in tense contract discussions with the government.

Original Article
Source: the star
Author: Robert Benzie