PARLIAMENT HILL—The administrator for a township in Treasury Board President Tony Clement’s constituency that received $455,350 for projects under the controversial $50-million G8 legacy fund says the township sent all its funding applications directly to Mr. Clement’s constituency office.
Furthermore, it was Mr. Clement’s office that also advised the township which of the 15 to 20 projects—only three were accepted—would receive funding in the scheme, possibly contradicting the version of events Mr. Clement gave to the Commons Government Operations and Estimates Committee last June.
Don Chevalier, the chief administrative officer and treasurer for the Township of Lake of Bays, east of Huntsville, Ont., where the G8 leaders met June 25 and 26 last year, said the township was not informed which projects, if any, would receive support until October 2009.
“We had to do some scrambling because June was the [deadline], we had to have it all built,” Mr. Chevalier told The Hill Times on Wednesday.
As with many of the 15 municipalities that received money from the $50-million fund, the government primarily selected projects that were designed to improve the appearance of the township. The village whose projects were accepted, Bayville, Ont., received funding for the construction of a band shell and nearby public washrooms, which cost $274,850. A heritage plaque walkway and “streetscape” improvements, such as lighting, trees, murals and welcome signs were also approved. Bayville is about 25 kilometres away from the summit site of Huntsville.
Mr. Chevalier said the township also sent in applications for money to upgrade a local airport and improve a highway.
“We submitted them to Tony’s office,” Mr. Chevalier said. “There would be about 15 to 20 projects that we submitted.”
Asked whether the township council reduced the list of projects to the three that got the funding or whether Mr. Clement’s office just told the council which ones would receive funding, Mr. Chevalier replied: “It was the latter, they just told, advised us.”
The township mayor at the time, Susan Pryke, was among nine mayors and reeves, including a First Nation council leader, who were members of a private committee chaired by Mr. Clement in 2008 that coordinated plans for the projects, and according to one former reeve also screened applications, as the planning was in its early stages.
The nine municipalities represented on the committee received 83 per cent of the $50-million available—a total of $41.4-million. The remaining six municipalities that received money for beautification projects and several infrastructure projects but were not on the committee got only $2.5-million.
Mr. Clement, whose office did not return emailed questions from The Hill Times, told the Government Operations and Estimates Committee shortly before Parliament recessed for the summer that he had asked local mayors to decide which projects should qualify for funding.
"As a result of this process, there were over 242 projects that were arrived at to potentially be funded,” Mr. Clement said.
“I went to my mayors, not only the six [advising him]. I went to all 16 municipalities. Six mayors were represented on a committee where we would convey information to them and they would convey information to us, but I went to all the mayors and said there was no way the Government of Canada would fund 242 projects and told them to get that out of their heads right then,” he testified.
"So they said they agreed that 242 was too much and they suggested 32 or 33, which they conveyed to me, that conform to the terms and conditions that were set out by the Government of Canada. I conveyed them to the department and to the minister of infrastructure, Minister [John] Baird at the time, and that's how that process went."
The government had earlier said Mr. Baird selected the projects to be financed, and Mr. Baird last spring was fielding questions about the controversy in the House of Commons.
Mr. Clement was industry minister and minister responsible for a Northern Ontario economic development agency until Mr. Harper named him Treasury Board President after the May 2 election, and his department’s handling of the legacy funding came under severe criticism in a report from an inquiry into the spending by former Auditor General Sheila Fraser.
NDP MP Pat Martin (Winnipeg, Man.), chair of the Commons Government Operations and Estimates Committee, said his panel may be the only Parliamentary avenue for a full inquiry into the spending, in part because it was controlled and arranged through Mr. Clement’s office rather than federal departments.
“There is really no other avenue of investigative search for this, than a Parliamentary committee,” Mr. Martin told The Hill Times. “The auditor general [John Wiersema] has been pretty clear, they don’t intend to reopen this, although the auditor general does act on requests as well, so he may consider a formal request from members of parliament or a standing committee.”
Mr. Martin said as the non-partisan chair, he’s unable to initiate a committee meeting. If four members of the committee send a letter to the chair asking for the committee to be recovened, it can be done.
“I haven’t received a letter to that effect,” he said, adding, “It has the appearance that the intake, the evaluation and the selection process was all done in the constituency office of a Cabinet minister office. That makes a mockery of Treasury Board guidelines, if that were the case. We may have to take this up with the President of the Treasury Board.”
Mr. Chevalier said Lake of Bays township has yet to begin the highway improvement project it sought funding for.
“Oh no,” he said. “It’s throughout Ontario and I imagine Canada wide, we have an infrastructure deficit as far as the roads go.”
Origin
Source: Hill Times
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