“We would have had to go back through every single dollar that those departments spent, and try to determine whether it was [Public Security and Anti-Terrorism—that would be a huge task,” Mr. Ferguson told The Hill Times following the April 29 release of his office’s 10-chapter spring 2013 audit.
“To me, the first thing would be to try to go back in some detail on some of those budget loads, find out where they actually loaded it, and then try to determine what spending went against that. It’s sort of getting down to the very detail, almost tracing the serial numbers on the dollars.”
The AG’s report has become the latest revelation to shake the government’s claim to strong fiscal management. While the report flagged serious concerns on a number of files from the sustainability of search and rescue to the progress towards establishing an historical record of the residential school system, it is the chapter on federal accounting of $12.9-billion in Public Safety and Anti-Terrorism spending over the past decade that stands out.
The Treasury Board allocated $12.9-billion in funding for public security and anti-terrorism [PSAT] initiatives in 35 departments and agencies between 2001 and 2009. Based on reports filed by the involved agencies, $9.8-billion of the allocated funding was spent on PSAT. What happened to the remaining $3.1-billion is anyone’s guess, including the Treasury Board’s.
“The best that could be done in terms of providing us with explanations were these sort of generalities. Maybe the money was actually spent on PSAT initiatives, but maybe it was mis-recorded somewhere else. Maybe the departments weren’t able to spend it all, so it just lapsed, or maybe it got carried over, and spent on other things related to PSAT or related to something else,” Mr. Ferguson said. “All that really does is cover the whole gambit. ... It’s not particularly helpful.”
The Treasury Board Secretariat had already been made aware of inadequacies in PSAT accounting in the spring 2004 report released by then auditor general Sheila Fraser. That report recommended that all PSAT departments and agencies “complete their annual reports and detail the specific results of their projects” to the government and Parliament. The Treasury Board Secretariat agreed, but Mr. Ferguson said that the department was unable to provide “a summary picture” when his office returned to PSAT in its latest audit.
“We were expecting that there would be some summary view of all of this, because it was a big, horizontal initiative that started at the centre, and information was being collected at the centre, so we wanted to know whether there was reporting going up that could then be used to make decisions of the whole program,” he said. “[T]hat type of summary never happened.”
Despite the $3.1-billion in unaccounted spending, the Auditor General reported that the audit found no evidence of wrongdoing.
“If we had seen anything here that told us there seems to be something else going on, we would have taken the audit in that direction,” Mr. Ferguson said.
That’s unlikely to satisfy opposition members of Public Accounts Committee, the committee charged with reviewing the AG’s report.
The committee began its study of the latest AG report on May 2 by hearing from Mr. Ferguson. Members of the committee will review the report and likely pick four chapters to study, with the government and opposition sides of the committee both getting two choices for study.
Liberal MP Gerry Byrne (Humber-St. Barb-Baie Verte, Nfld.), who sits on the Public Accounts Committee, questioned whether or not the money could have been spent on gazebos. Some $50-million in Border Infrastructure funding was spent on gazebos and beautification projects in the riding of Parry Sound-Muskoka, Ont., in the lead-up to the 2010 G8/G20 summit in Toronto.
Conservative members of the Public Accounts Committee said that they had no problem with the committee looking into the auditor general’s PSAT review, and pointed out that Mr. Ferguson had stated that there was no evidence of wrongdoing.
“The auditor general indicated that he had no knowledge of any inappropriate spending of funds, so I accept the Auditor General at face value,” said Conservative MP Bryan Hayes (Sault Ste. Marie, Ont.). “If, as a committee, we choose to undertake that particular audit, then those questions will be answered.”
Conservative MP Bev Shipley (Lambton-Kent-Middlesex, Ont.) reiterated that Mr. Ferguson’s office found no evidence of wrongdoing, and downplayed the poor accounting as a problem that would be corrected.
“The president of the Treasury Board was really clear that we do have to start doing things to get out of the silos,” Mr. Shipley said. “That’s the trouble sometimes in government. Each [department] is looking after its own and it doesn’t get coordinated in the way that it should.”
However, Mr. Byrne challenged the suggestion that there was no wrongdoing because the auditor general hadn’t found evidence of wrongdoing.
“Quite frankly, if the government is suggesting that the auditor general is saying there is no wrongdoing, that’s not what he said. He said there’s no evidence that was presented to him that there was no wrongdoing,” Mr. Byrne told The Hill Times. “You can’t tell me what you spent it on but you can assure me that it was spent well? I just don’t buy that.”
Mr. Byrne called claims by the government that it would make the main estimates in annual funding more transparent “nonsense.”
“The government suggests that they want to make the main estimates easier to [understand]. They’ve been talking a good game for a long time, they’ve never produced anything which makes these things any easier. In fact, the language that the use and the consolidation of information makes it tougher for Parliament to have a better understanding of budgetary decision,” he said.
NDP MP Malcolm Allen (Welland, Ont.), who also sits on the Public Accounts Committee, said the PSAT review was also on his party’s list of priority reports to be reviewed. He was also critical of the government’s claims that it would make spending easier to understand.
“For the minister to say [he’s] going to make things plainer for Parliamentarians to understand—well the auditor general couldn’t find $3.1-billion because of the accounting of the Treasury Board Secretariat who’s responsible for those different departments,” he said. “It’s a bit rich to suggest that somehow MPs and Canadians will be able to follow the money trail when the Auditor General can’t.”
NDP MP and Public Accounts Committee chair David Christopherson (Hamilton Centre, Ont.) said that the committee would determine which reports to study in the coming weeks, and expects some chapters from the report to be under review before Parliament rises for the summer.
Original Article
Source: hilltimes.com
Author: CHRIS PLECASH
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