Transparency lacked in G8

Senior Conservative officials broke federal rules to shower $50-million on the riding of the minister now overseeing Ottawa’s austerity plan, according to the final audit of a G8 program that fuelled opposition charges of pork-barrel politics.

In her last report, Auditor-General Sheila Fraser said the funding for the G8 Legacy Infrastructure Fund was approved by Parliament under the guise of a border initiative. The money was then distributed to projects in the riding of Treasury Board President Tony Clement without any input from civil servants, in a clear breach of federal policies dealing with transparency and accountability.

“It is very unusual and troubling. There is no paper trail behind the selection of the 32 projects,” said John Wiersema, the interim Auditor-General who recently took over from a retired Ms. Fraser. “I, personally, in my career in auditing, have not encountered a situation like that.”

Mr. Clement showed up at a news conference to defend the spending in his riding, but Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird physically shielded him from questions at times. The two stood behind a podium and single microphone, and Mr. Baird, who was in charge of Ottawa’s infrastructure program when the spending was approved, often fielded questions the media directed at Mr. Clement.

The pair took the Auditor-General’s criticism on the chin, promising to improve “anachronistic” rules and regulations that were used by civil servants to get the spending quickly approved through Parliament in a period of economic downturn.

Responding on behalf of the government, Baird accepted the auditor general’s criticism of what he labelled “administrative deficiencies.” But he insisted there was no attempt to deliberately mislead Parliament.

In a separate chapter of the report, the auditor general says spending on operations and security for both the G8 and subsequent G20 meetings in Ontario was presented piecemeal to Parliament instead of in a package, leaving MPs poorly informed about total costs.

But in one bright spot, the report says it appears the initially budgeted $1.1 billion for the summits will actually come in around $664 million.

Clement later told a news conference that a list of 242 originally proposed projects was compiled by six mayors in his riding. He asked them to whittle it down to their top priorities, which they did, producing the 32 which eventually received funding.

“So there’s no mystery here,” Clement said.

Among the most controversial:

$274,000 on public toilets 20 kilometres from the summit site in Huntsville.

$100,000 on a gazebo an hour’s drive away.

$1.1 million for sidewalk and tree upgrades 100 kilometres away.

$194,000 for a park 100 kilometres away.

$745,000 on downtown improvements for three towns nearly 70 kilometres away.