Efforts at financial accountability for the secret world are of much more recent vintage. The very first time the auditor general stuck his forensic nose into the activities of the Canadian security and intelligence community was in 1996. This pioneering study has since been followed up with increasing vigour, especially in the post 9/11 years as the significance of security work increased exponentially and as the funding taps opened wide. The auditor general has come to play an important accountability role, with spending audits that are, as their title suggests, something more — “performance audits.” These are not just worthy bean-counting exercises, they are studies of how well the government manages the public purse and uses taxpayers’ money.
The most recent auditor general’s report, released this week, contains two alarming findings. One has been blazoned across the news media — namely the astounding fact that the government cannot properly account for $3.1 billion in funding that was originally allocated to anti-terrorism efforts between 2001 and 2009. That is a lot of money to go missing with regard to any government activity. It is particularly worrying with regard to public safety initiatives, not least because the original intention behind big spending on counter-terrorism, starting in 2001, was to fill deficiencies left by steep spending cuts during the post Cold War period and to provide the Canadian government with stepped-up capabilities to meet a post-9/11 security environment. No one needs reminding that while the security environment has changed since 9/11, it remains complex, fluid and challenging, with terrorism as a top-of-mind problem. On top of this the security and intelligence community is currently being whiplashed, as are all government sectors, by spending cuts, with loss of analytical capabilities a particular concern.
Where did the missing $3.1 billion go? No one knows. The current Auditor General, Michael Ferguson, is a careful man, who knows he has a bully pulpit but goes out of his way to find a measured tone. He is not saying the money was misspent, just that he doesn’t know how it was spent — whether it remained unspent, was carried forward, or re-allocated for other purposes by departments. This is not good enough, as Treasury Board Minister Tony Clement half-heartedly admitted while getting in the usual partisan shot that the original budget plan was a Liberal one (of course carried forward and augmented by the Conservatives once in power).
But the untraceable funds are only half the story, even if the tastier half for the media. The second issue that emerges from the auditor general’s report is the lack of interest shown by the Conservative government in strategically monitoring overall spending on national security. The Treasury Board secretariat was supposed to maintain this strategic outlook and provide annual reports on where all the money was going. Instead they were quietly allowed, in 2010, to let this reporting drop. No one knows why this decision was made; I wonder who, outside Treasury Board, even knew it had been made? It certainly came as unwanted news to the auditor general, who as long ago as 2004 had urged the government to improve its overall strategic accounting for national security spending.
Is this just an internal bunfight between accountants? No, it matters deeply. National security spending ranges across a large number of government departments and agencies. Allocations of funding, and an ability to monitor results, are critical to any effort to pursue integrated counter-terrorism efforts, of the kind promised in the government’s 2004 National Security Strategy (a strategy never updated, but never refuted, by the Conservatives). Strategic reviews of funding are critical to a government’s ability to adapt to a changing security environment, by moving money around to where it is needed most, and critical to an ability to provide leadership. In our current system, the national security adviser is charged with co-ordinating the government’s national security bureaucracy, but the current NSA, Stephen Rigby, does not hold any power over the purse.
In response to the auditor general’s recommendation to put in place a proper system for strategic reporting on national security spending, the government offers plenty of fudge. It promises to restart, by March 2014, the effort it cancelled in 2010 “in a way consistent with established departmental accountabilities for monitoring and reporting on expenditures and results.” This sounds perilously close to business as usual — the business that lost track of $3.1 billion.
For a government committed to strict control of its activities and sound fiscal policy, the AG’s report should be a deep embarrassment and a matter for urgent correction. For a government more attuned to national security concerns than many of its predecessors, and more attentive to security and intelligence functions, the lesson is the need for more work on co-ordination of effort and more central leadership. Ultimately, national security is the prime minister’s file and the revelations of the auditor general’s report about untraceable spending suggests the prime minister needs a stronger grip on the strategic direction of Canadian national security policy. Absent central review of overarching spending, no such control is possible.
Wesley Wark is a visiting professor at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Toronto and an expert on security and intelligence issues.
Original Article
Source: ottawacitizen.com
Author: Wesley Wark
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