A team headed by John Dyble, deputy minister to the premier, and three other deputy ministers were called in after the New Democrats released a leaked memo showing that civil servants appeared to be mixing public and party work and using government resources for Liberal party purposes.
The Dyble report released today confirmed all of those allegations. If found two officials, Kim Haakstad, former deputy chief of staff to Premier Christy Clark, and Brian Bonney, a former Communications Director, engaged in serious misconduct and that several others, including Pamela Martin, the premier's director of outreach, engaged in misconduct to a lesser extent.
Click here to see more photos from Premier Christy Clark's news conference.
The investigation found that Bonney spent about half his time on political business and used three private email accounts to cover his tracks.
Multicultural Minister John Yap told the investigation that private email accounts were used so that records couldn't be obtained by Freedom of Information.
Yap resigned after the memo was leaked, while denying had seen it or that he was involved in any of the activities discussed.
The investigation found he was involved however.
At one point when staff from his office was inappropriately helping individuals applying for government contracts as outreach workers, an aide, Mike Lee, emailed Yap and said:
"I have send (sic) them reminder emails to double check their application and ultimately check for any trace of I and Brian's involvement. It is absolutely critical that we do not leave any evidence in us helping them through this application"
Yap replied: "I appreciate each of your efforts with the 3 RFQs. Great job. Let's now hope for the best."
Lee has now resigned.
Clark issued a short statement saying that she accepts all of the recommendations in the report and "we will take action immediately."
She later told reporters that the Liberal Party has issued a $70,000 cheque as a good faith payment to make up for any party work done on government time. If the comptroller general subsequently finds that the actual amount is greater, that amount will be paid in full she said.
"I believe that when mistakes are made, and serious mistakes were made, the right thing to do for leaders is step up and take responsibility, get to the bottom of it and fix it."
She said Yap will not be returning to cabinet "at this time."
The memo included an insulting reference to "quick wins" that could be achieved by the Liberals by apologizing for historic wrongs, including the Chinese Head Tax. The deputies were not asked to comment on the content of the memo, but found themselves compelled to characterize those comments as "offensive and inflammatory."
After the release of the memo, Haakstad resigned. Bonney left government earlier this year, after being paid about $124,000 for 16 months work.
Haakstad, who distributed the memo, has not talked publicly about her role.
Yap, like Clark, said he had neither seen the memo nor had any knowledge of its contents.
It appeared that scheme was never fully implemented.
Before it was shelved, however, a request for qualifications for was issued for outreach workers. The investigation found some of those applicants, who were subsequently accepted, were coached in the preparation of their applications by staff in Yap's office.
The contract for that work was never signed by government, but the outreach workers started work and were paid a total of $6,800 without proper authorization.
"I'm sorry that I was not fully apprised and I made a mistake here and I'm owning up to it," Yap said Thursday. "I believed it was within appropriate bounds to assist individuals who were interested in a contract without directly influencing civil servants who were in charge of making those decisions were and now I've learned the hard way that that was not appropriate."
Clark at first played down the memo at a meeting with the Sun editorial board on the day after it was released. But she later took it more seriously, appointing Dyble and issuing a statement calling it wrong and apologizing for it. She said later she should have taken it more seriously when she first heard about it.
The memo, dated 2012, outlined a multicultural outreach plan under which officials in the premier's office, the multiculturalism ministry and the Liberal caucus would collaborate to use taxpayer-funded resources to help the Liberal party attract voters in ethnic communities.
The Liberals subsequently pointed to a leaked draft management letter from Auditor-General John Doyle criticizing the way the NDP used Caucus funds to hire Gabriel Yiu, an NDP candidate, to provide outreach services to multicultural communities. The NDP scheme involved shifting funds intending for riding services into a central fund that was used to hire Yiu, among other things. It was approved by the comptroller of the legislature when it was set up and was stopped after the auditor general flagged it as inappropriate.
Original Article
Source: canada.com
Author: Craig McInnes
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