The pledge for improved transparency comes after a Star investigation revealed 90 per cent of the $2.4 billion paid out for management consulting in the past decade comes with no description of the services provided, despite government guidelines encouraging the information be disclosed.
Clement is asking departments to come up with suggestions on ways to publicly disclose the information, the Star has learned.
“Our government expects all departments to provide an informative short summary of contracts and will take steps where necessary to ensure that that is done,” Clement said in a May 13 letter to the Star.
Clement’s statement expands on comments he made last Thursday while under fire for the second Question Period in a row because of the Star’s findings.
“I do not think it is too much to ask that when departments engage in management contracts for perfectly appropriate reasons, such as First Nations health branch using nurses, for instance, that there be a line or two added for publication on exactly what the contract is,” Clement said.
“I think we should require this in the future.”
Clement, who is in Europe, was not available for an interview. His office did not provide any further details on Clement’s plans to get departments to share more contract information with the public.
An ongoing Star investigation found most federal departments are not following Treasury Board guidelines encouraging them to “provide a brief description of each contract so that the public may benefit from additional context.”
Right now, federal departments and agencies are required to disclose only bare-bone details about these often lucrative consulting contracts.
In most cases, departments only post a vendor’s name, a reference number, dates affiliated with the contract, the amount spent and a generic explanation of the kind of work done — for example, management consulting.
The Star asked more than a dozen departments for proper descriptions of the management consulting work provided on specific contracts.
At the time, all but three departments eventually spelled out what work was done, although it took many of them three weeks or longer to provide the information they’re encouraged to already disclose.
Human Resources and Skills Development Canada, the Public Health Agency of Canada and Health Canada, however, all directed the Star to file an access to information request to obtain the contract details.
A day after the Star published its first article on the secret consulting contracts, officials from HRSDC and public health provided information the departments previously refused to share.
The $636,000 public health paid a numbered company listed to a Quebec home that now has a defunct phone was for programming expertise to assist with maintaining the agency’s centralized database, used for disease surveillance among other things.
A Health Canada spokesman said the department is working to provide the information sometime in the near future.
Original Article
Source: thestar.com
Author: Jesse McLean
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