The opposition calls it explosive: a bombshell draft report by
Canada's auditor general, complete with charges of pork-barrel largesse,
dubious government spending and a "misinformed" Parliament.
The Conservatives call it a dud.
Either way, the early draft of Sheila Fraser's forthcoming
report, a chapter of which was shown to The Canadian Press, promises to
rattle podiums Tuesday when the televised leaders' debates get underway.
Fraser's confidential Jan. 13 draft, a chapter of which was seen
by The Canadian Press, says the government misinformed Parliament to win
approval for a $50-million G8 fund that lavished money on questionable
projects in Industry Minister Tony Clement's riding.
And it suggests the process by which the funding was approved may have been illegal.
Conservative cabinet minister John Baird insisted Monday that the
final report differs from the draft — most notably in that it doesn't
say the government "misinformed" Parliament.
"The report has changed considerably," said Baird, who as
infrastructure minister would have been privy to subsequent drafts of
the report, but not the final version.
Fraser analyzed the $1-billion cost of last June's G8 summit in
Ontario cottage country and subsequent gathering of G20 leaders in
downtown Toronto and was to have tabled a final report in Parliament on
April 5.
The report was put on ice when Conservative leader Stephen Harper's
government was defeated, and now won't be released until sometime after
the May 2 election.
The draft says a local "G8 summit liaison and implementation
team" — Clement, the mayor of Huntsville, Ont., and the general manager
of Deerhurst Resort, which hosted the summit — chose the 32 projects
that received funding. It says there was no apparent regard for the
needs of the summit or the conditions laid down by the government.
Among the questionable projects funded were:
- $274,000 on public toilets 20 km from the summit site
- $100,000 on a gazebo an hour's drive away
- $1.1 million for sidewalk and tree upgrades 100 km away
- $194,000 for a park 100 km away
- $745,000 on downtown improvements for three towns nearly 70 km away.
News of the leaked report, which emerged the day before the first
of the all-important televised leaders' debates, came as a new Canadian
Press-Harris Decima poll suggested the Tories were closing in on
majority territory.
The latest poll gave the Conservatives the support of 40 per cent
of respondents, well ahead of the Liberals at 28 per cent. The NDP were
at 15 per cent; the Bloc Quebecois and the Greens trailed at eight per
cent each.
Hungry for a game-changer, Harper's rivals pounced on the news.
It was common knowledge the Conservatives were "spraying money
around like drunken sailors in Tony Clement's riding" in the leadup to
the G8 meetings, said Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff.
"What we didn't know is that they lied to Parliament," Ignatieff said.
"What we didn't know is that they may have broken the law. This
is not me telling you this, this is the auditor general of Canada."
Ignatieff urged Harper to agree to release the report
immediately, and to explain to Canadians what he called a "scandalous"
abuse of public money and the parliamentary process.
"These are shocking revelations," he said. "I don't know how
Canadians can have confidence in a government that treats public money
in this way."
Baird said the government would happily support the report's
early release; a Conservative spokesman said it's now up to the auditor
general and the Speaker of the House of Commons to do so.
Fraser said she can only issue the final version of her report
when Parliament is sitting — and urged Canadians to base their
conclusions on that version only.
The normal audit process requires sharing early drafts with
government departments to validate the facts and to give departments an
opportunity to offer additional information, she said in a statement.
"Sometimes during the process of fact validation, additional
information is brought to our attention. Only the final report that is
tabled in Parliament represents our audit findings and conclusions."
NDP Leader Jack Layton repeated his call for a public inquiry
into the lingering controversies surrounding last year's G8 and G20
meetings, saying Fraser's draft report makes the need for such an
investigation even more urgent.
He accused the Tories of "hiding facts from Canadians, leading
Parliament down the garden path, and possibly breaking the law while
doing so."
The draft report says that in November 2009, the government
tabled supplementary spending estimates which requested $83 million for a
border infrastructure fund aimed at reducing congestion at border
crossings.
The government did not reveal that it intended to devote $50
million of that money to a G8 legacy fund, even though Huntsville is
nowhere near the Canada-U.S. border.
The Canadian Press was not given access to the entire report on
the $1 billion in G8 and G20 spending, and Fraser's conclusions on
overall spending were not available.
In the draft chapter on the legacy fund, Fraser notes the
Appropriations Act stipulates that funding is supposed to be allocated
based on the items presented in the estimates.
"This ensures that public funds are spent as authorized by Parliament for the purposes intended by Parliament," she writes.
"We found that money expended for the G8 infrastructure projects
under the Border Infrastructure Fund were approved by Parliament without
any indication that $50 million of the appropriations for border
congestion reduction would be spent on G8 legacy projects.
"Therefore, in our opinion, Parliament was misinformed."
The report says the government disagrees with the auditor
general's finding. Treasury Board officials maintain it is "normal
practice" to aggregate expenditure information in the supplementary
estimates and say it was done in this case "to avoid any delays that
might occur if a new funding mechanism was created for the one-time (G8)
event."
But Fraser says lumping the legacy fund into the border fund
"created a lack of transparency about the purpose of the request for
funding and, in our view, Parliament was not provided with a clear
explanation of the nature of the approval being sought."
She adds that "this matter raises broader legal questions related
to the use of appropriated funds by government. Parliament may wish to
examine these competing interpretations to ensure that vote wording
reflects Parliament's intentions."
The legacy fund was intended to help Parry Sound-Muskoka, the
host riding represented by Clement, "enhance local infrastructure and
showcase its natural beauty and support a safe, secure and successful
hosting of the G8 summit."
Clement's local liaison team was responsible for identifying and
proposing projects worthy of funding. To win approval, the team was
supposed to work with Foreign Affairs' summit management office to
ensure the proposed projects supported the needs of the summit.
"We asked the Summit Management Office to provide us with any
documentation showing how they were involved in the review of projects
but were informed that they were not involved," Fraser says.
Fraser's auditors also asked Infrastructure Canada, which
provided the funds, for documentation demonstrating how the projects
were chosen and how they fit with the purpose of the fund.
"The department was not able to provide us with any documentation
as they were not part of the selection process and informed us they
were not provided with supporting documentation when given the
recommended list of projects to be funded."
Indeed, the report notes that Clement announced several projects
would receive funding before the government actually spelled out the
conditions for funding.
"We are concerned by the lack of documentation around the
selection of projects for funding," Fraser says, adding that
documentation is vital to "demonstrate transparency, accountability and
value for money" in the expenditure of public money.
Fraser's team also examined the list of 32 projects that received
funding but "(we) were not able to determine how they supported the
needs of the summit or met the conditions set out by government."
For instance, the report notes the government devoted $26 million
to create a Huntsville G8 Centre, which was supposed to be the command
centre for co-ordinating logistics for the summit.
"We were informed that at the time of the announcement for this
project, (Foreign Affairs) had already determined the centre would not
be suitable as it was not expected to be completed on time," Fraser
says.
In the end, other facilities were rented for the command centre.
The report is likely to turn up the heat on Clement, who's
already been accused of funnelling disproportionate amounts of federal
cash into his riding.
The Liberal party has calculated that Clement's riding has
received about $92 million in federal infrastructure funding, including
the legacy fund and other economic stimulus programs — more than four
times the average $15 million to $20 million most ridings in the country
received.