The Auditor-General’s office will not re-open the G8 Legacy Fund file – even though the NDP says new documents it obtained from municipalities reveal evidence of a cover-up designed to keep federal auditors in the dark. The documents show federal public servants were in the room with Conservative minister Tony Clement as he laid out how his constituents could qualify for millions in G8 funding. The attendance lists, minutes and other documents appear to be directly at odds with the Auditor-General’s finding in June that “no public servants were involved in the selection of projects” and that no documents existed.
The NDP released the documents at a news conference in Ottawa Monday morning. In response to a question from The Globe and Mail, the Auditor General’s office released a statement in an email Monday afternoon.
“The Office of the Auditor General has the authority to request documentation for funding of federal public money. We asked for documentation, but we were not provided with any. Deputy ministers signed off on the accuracy of facts in the chapter. We have no plans to reopen the file,” wrote spokesman Ghislain Desjardins.
The $50-million G8 Legacy Fund was primarily devoted to improving the look of community downtowns in the area of Parry Sound–Muskoka, which hosted the 2010 G8 summit. The Auditor-General’s June report expressed concern however that when Parliament approved the spending, it was told that the money would be spent on border infrastructure.
The NDP obtained the new information by bypassing the federal government, using freedom of information laws to seek out documents directly from municipalities. There, via hundreds of pages from Bracebridge and Gravenhurst, a very different picture emerged as to what federal officials knew.
For instance, the documents include minutes of a Feb. 27, 2009, meeting in Huntsville, chaired by Mr. Clement, where the minister explained how G8 legacy funding would work.
In addition to representatives from local communities, the meeting was also attended by four federal public servants from FedNor – a development agency for Northern Ontario led by Mr. Clement – and two officials from Industry Canada, also led at the time by Mr. Clement.
Other meetings were attended by Gérald Cossette, then the G8 summit manager with the federal department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade.
At a news conference in Ottawa, NDP MP Charlie Angus said the documents show the funding process was able to escape the jurisdiction of the Auditor-General because it was all run out of Mr. Clement’s constituency office – which is not supposed to be involved in ministerial, or government, work.
“The use of a constituency office to funnel money is very disturbing,” Mr. Angus said, arguing the documents raise new questions about a process that has already attracted plenty of controversy.
“If you wanted money from Tony, call Tony’s staff. They’d get you the money. We didn’t know that. And what we also didn’t know was that senior bureaucrats who told the Auditor-General that they didn’t know anything about this process, sat in on meetings and helped write the criteria based on the suggestions of the local mayors. We didn’t know any of this and the question is, why didn’t we know this?”
Heather Hume, a spokesperson for Mr. Clement, said there is nothing new in the "unfounded attacks" from the NDP.
" The Auditor General has already fully investigated this spending and all information was made available to the Auditor-General," she said in an email. "Every single project funded has been proudly announced by our government, and can be found on the Department of Infrastructure website. The Auditor-General made recommendations to improve the administrative process. We appreciate these recommendations and will improve the process in the future."
Origin
Source: Globe@Mail
No comments:
Post a Comment