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Friday 10 June 2011
FOR Y A D O right A world UPof Tnews N G I S at home…
AG SLAMS TORY G8 SPENDING SECRECY OTTAWA (Canadian Press)
Same verdict, softer words. The auditor general has delivered a stinging rebuke to the Harper government, saying Conservatives kept Parliament in the dark about a $50-million G8 fund that sprayed money on dubious projects in a cabinet minister’s riding. The final report on the G8 legacy infrastructure fund concludes the government “did not clearly or transparently” identify how the money was going to be spent when it sought parliamentary approval for the funding. Moreover, the report criticizes the unprecedented lack of documentation to explain how and why 32 infrastructure projects in Ontario’s Parry SoundMuskoka region were selected to receive the government largesse. It concludes that public ser“I personally vants had no input into the selecin my career in tion process; that projects were auditing have approved by John Baird, then not encountered infrastructure minister, strictly a situation like on the advice of Treasury Board that where there President Tony Clement, whose is absolutely cottage country riding hosted the no paper trail G8 leaders’ summit. behind this.” “It is very unusual and trou– Interim auditor bling,” interim auditor general general John John Wiersema said yesterday Wiersema after tabling the report, which was prepared under his predecessor Sheila Fraser. “There is no paper trail behind the selection of the 32 projects. I personally in my career in auditing have not encountered a situation like that where there is absolutely no paper trail behind this.” Responding on behalf of the government, Baird accepted the auditor general’s criticism of what he labelled “administrative deficiencies.” But he insisted
CANADIAN PRESS
Treasury Board President Tony Clement listens to a question during a news conference yesterday in Ottawa. there was no attempt to deliberately mislead Parliament. The final report does not contain the inflammatory language used in a January draft, which baldly asserted the government had “misinformed” Parliament about the G8 legacy fund and suggested the opaque process for approving the funding might actually have been illegal. The report details how, in November 2009, the government tabled supplementary estimates in which it
asked Parliament to approve $83 million for a border infrastructure fund aimed at reducing congestion at border crossings. Parliament was not told that $50 million of the fund was to be devoted to infrastructure projects hundreds of kilometres from the Canada-U.S. border – in Clement’s riding. Opposition MPs noted that Clement’s job in the new Parliament is to slash $4 billion worth of annual “fat” from government spending.
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