Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Monday, January 23, 2012

NDP calls on Clement to turn himself in to police over G8 'cover-up'

The NDP is calling on Tony Clement to turn himself in to the police after disclosing documents they say show he lied and covered up his role in dispensing a $50-million G8 “slush fund” in 2010.

New Democrat MP Charlie Angus issued the call Monday based on new documents in which a senior federal bureaucrat contradicts Mr. Clement's insistence that he was not involved in choosing which projects would get funding to spruce up his riding.

“He told the Canadian people, ‘If anybody could ever prove that I would do that, I'd turn myself over to the cops.’ Well, Tony, what about it?” Mr. Angus told a news conference.

“It's clear that a cover-up happened and the auditor-general was misled.”

The Treasury Board president responded via Twitter, calling the latest revelations “another NDP drive-by slime.”

“As usual NDP confusing recommending with choosing,” Mr. Clement wrote on the social networking site.

Mr. Clement, however, has previously insisted he had no role in even recommending which projects should be funded.

He told a Commons committee last November that he simply played a “co-ordinating role,” forwarding the wish lists of mayors in his Parry Sound-Muskoka riding to John Baird, who was then infrastructure minister and had the final say on which projects would get funding.

That assertion is directly contradicted by documents detailing the recollections of a senior civil servant involved in helping the sprawling, Ontario cottage-country riding reap the benefits of hosting the G8 summit. The documents were obtained by the NDP under the Access to Information Act.

Tom Dodds, an official with the northern Ontario economic development agency known as FedNor, says his agency helped Mr. Clement’s office prepare letters advising municipalities that most of their original 242 proposals would not get any funding. As industry minister at the time, Mr. Clement presided over FedNor.

The unsuccessful applicants were told “their projects would not be forwarded to Minister Baird for his consideration,” Mr. Dodds wrote in a memo to the deputy minister of Industry last Nov. 2 – the same day Mr. Clement appeared before a Commons committee to explain his role in the G8 legacy fund controversy.

“A list of unsuccessful applicants was provided by the minister’s office to FedNor officials and letters were prepared in accordance with the direction received from the minister’s office,” Mr. Dodds wrote.

“Finally, once Minister Clement’s office provided the list of recommended projects to Minister Baird’s office, FedNor officials transferred the catalogue of projects to Infrastructure Canada officials. All 242 project proposals were sent; this included the 32 projects which were recommended by Minister Clement.”

The memo was written by the chief of staff to the deputy minister of Industry, summarizing a discussion she'd had with Mr. Dodds about his involvement in the legacy fund. It was written last Nov. 2 — the same day Mr. Clement appeared before the Commons public accounts committee to explain his role in dispersing the funds.

In an earlier email, dated Jan. 13, 2010, Mr. Dodds wrote: “It is my understanding that MINO (Clement’s office) advised Infrastructure Canada which projects should be supported under the G8 Infrastructure and Legacy Fund and their staff prepared contribution agreements for them accordingly.”

Mr. Clement’s version of events when he appeared before the Commons public accounts committee last November was starkly different. He vehemently denied opposition accusations that he or any of his officials were involved in selecting the winning 32 projects which received almost $45-million.

“That’s just a myth,” he told the committee. “It never happened that way. We were not involved in selecting these projects.”

Mr. Clement said the mayors initially came up with 242 proposed projects worth an estimated $500-million. When he advised them to whittle down their wish lists, he said they came back with 33 projects, 32 of which were ultimately approved by Mr. Baird.

Opposition MPs expressed incredulity that the mayors managed to self-select precisely the projects that received funding. But Mr. Clement adamantly rejected opposition assertions that he was the “guiding hand” behind the choices.

“It was self-evaluation based on what they knew were the criteria for the fund,” he told the committee.

“The municipalities prioritized the projects. They delivered those prioritized projects to the constituency office, who then in turn, without additional review or alteration, transmitted them ultimately to the Department of Transport and Infrastructure Canada, where the responsible minister would make the decision.”

In September, Mr. Clement told reporters it would have been illegal for him to choose which projects were funded.

“If I was the decision-maker, if I had set up a parallel process and created a situation where the auditor general did not know – that’s their (opposition MPs’) accusation – I’d be resigning right now and turning myself in to the local police office,” Mr. Clement said.

Mr. Baird, who appeared at committee alongside Mr. Clement, has backed up the Treasury Board president's version of events. He's insisted his department alone determined which projects to fund and, consequently, has fielded all opposition questions about the legacy fund in the Commons while Mr. Clement has sat silently in his chair.

Mr. Angus said Mr. Baird, now Foreign Affairs Minister, also needs to be held accountable.

“I think Mr. Baird has been the jovial jester who's been misleading the Canadian public and covering up for his friend.”

Mr. Dodds’ recollections also raise questions as to why Auditor General Sheila Fraser found no paper trail when she tried to determine how projects were selected. She was told no federal departments or agencies, other than Infrastructure Canada, were involved in the decision-making and could, therefore, provide no documentation.

The memo says FedNor compiled documentation on all 242 proposed projects, which it passed on to Infrastructure Canada.

Municipal documents, obtained in the past by the NDP through provincial freedom-of-information legislation, have shown Mr. Dodds and other FedNor officials attended local meetings with mayors at which the legacy fund was discussed. They’ve also shown that municipal officials were under the same impression as Mr. Dodds that Mr. Clement was calling the shots and that applications for funding were funnelled through Mr. Clement’s constituency office.

“Everybody in Canada knows Tony Clement is busted on this. Nobody believes this guy,” Mr. Angus said.

“We keep coming back to it and we keep adding to the picture. What he has done is engaged in the most ornery, old-style, pork-barrel, rum-bottle politics that I think Ottawa has seen in decades. And he thinks he's going to get away with it.”

The legacy fund, controversial since its inception, was used to pay for gazebos, public washrooms, park and streetscape improvements and other beautification projects in Mr. Clement’s riding, many of them nowhere near Huntsville, where the summit was actually held.

In her final report before retiring, Ms. Fraser blasted the government for keeping Parliament in the dark about the fund. She found that the government got Parliament’s authorization for an $83-million border infrastructure fund, without disclosing that $50-million of it was to be used for G8 legacy projects miles from any border crossing.

Mr. Baird has acknowledged some administrative foul-ups in creation of the fund but insists everything else was above-board.

Opposition MPs maintain the government set up a slush fund for Mr. Clement to dispense as he saw fit in a bid to win re-election in 2008. He’d won his riding by a meagre 28 votes in 2006 but sailed to victory two years later, with endorsements from local officials who were already meeting him to discuss funding, although the legacy fund had not yet been officially established.

Original Article
Source: Globe 
Author: Joan Bryden 

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