Tories reject suggestion they misled Parliament on G20 spending
The Conservative government says it “fully accepts” the Auditor General’s findings that greater transparency was needed surrounding the $50 million G8 Legacy fund, but rejects the suggestion that it deliberately misled Parliament to secure the cash.
Now-retired Auditor General Sheila Fraser, in her final report to Parliament tabled Thursday morning, concluded that the Conservatives skirted spending policies and did not clearly identify the nature of funding approvals sought for G8 infrastructure projects.
“The Auditor General does suggest administrative deficiencies surrounding the intake of these projects,” said Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird Thursday, flanked by Treasury Board President Tony Clement, at an Ottawa news conference.
Baird was Infrastructure Minister at the time of the G8 summit and approved the 32 infrastructure projects in Clement’s riding of Parry Sound-Muskoka, where the G8 summit took place in June 2010.
“The Auditor General would also like to see an improvement in the information and estimates Parliament received to ensure greater clarity and transparency. We fully accept those recommendations and will be taking steps to ensure that the process going forward will be more robust across government,” Baird said.
But he rejected any suggestion by the Auditor General and journalists that the government misled Parliament over the true nature of the projects in order to ensure their expediency.
“We announced all these projects publicly. They were all on the departmental website. We certainly had no motive on the transparency side. I think the Auditor General said she found no evidence of deliberate attempt in this regard,” Baird said.
Clement, who was Industry Minister at the time of the summit, told reporters that the current process used to present funding proposals to Parliament has been on the books for close to 100 years, “but I also agree that it is perfectly reasonable to look at updating this process for the 21st Century.”
“As a government that is committed to openness and transparency, we want to ensure that Parliamentarians receive the information that they need,” Clement said, noting he has directed Treasury Board secretariat officials to look at how this “anachronistic process” can be improved.
Interim Auditor General John Wiersema characterized the process by which the funding was attained as “very unusual and troubling” at his own press conference Thursday. He noted that no paper trail was evident in the selection of the projects and that the government broke several policies on spending.
When asked why there was no paper trail, Clement described a process in which he met with six Muskoka-area mayors in the lead-up to the summit and asked them to come up with a list of projects that met government terms and conditions and which would also be the “most appropriate and the highest priority” for each community.
“They came back with 32 projects. I forwarded them on to the (Infrastructure) minister and said, ‘Look, this is what my mayors came up with. You get final say, but of course, I support my mayors,’” Clement explained.
Tories reject suggestion they misled Parliament on G20 spending - thestar.com
