The department now says that it’s been able to account for $3-billion of the funding “through supplementary work with departments and other information” in a report that was quietly posted online on Nov. 26.
According to the report, the Treasury Board Secretariat initiated a “reconstruction exercise” over the summer of the $12.9-billion allocated and spent under the Public Security and Anti-Terrorism (PSAT) initiative between 2001 and 2009.
Established following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the PSAT program was intended to rapidly strengthen the federal government’s ability to respond to terrorist threats through investments in 35 federal departments and agencies.
Mr. Ferguson’s spring 2013 audit found that $3.1-billion of the funding could not be accounted for. TBS now says that $2-billion of the figure can be traced to nine departments.
National Defence was the largest source of unaccounted PSAT funding at $757.5-million, while $312.4-million of the unaccounted spending was traced back to Citizenship and Immigration Canada. Other departments cited in the report included Infrastructure Canada, Public Safety, Canadian Air Transport Security Authority, Canadian Food Inspection Agency, CSIS, the RCMP, and the Canadian Border Services Agency.
But the Treasury Board report goes on to state that $1.3-billion of the $3-billion was not included in the PSAT reporting framework — an assessment that does little to clarify what ultimately happened to the funding. An additional $500-million of the funding was reprofiled, $455-million was returned to general revenue, and more than $265-million was reallocated. An additional $94.2-million is classified as “Other.”
The Hill Times requested a technical briefing on the report, but no officials were available to discuss the findings.
“The PSAT reporting framework established by the secretariat was not intended to capture all of the PSAT initiatives—it was an incremental reporting requirement,” the TBS report states. “There were explicit exemptions to this additional reporting, reporting on incremental funding was often not required; and reporting on corporate costs... was not consistent.”
Although the AG’s spring 2013 audit found no evidence of wrongdoing or misappropriated funds, the report did raise concerns about the government’s ability to monitor spending under government-wide initiatives.
In an interview in May, Mr. Ferguson told The Hill Times that tracking down the $3.1-billion would be as difficult as “tracing serial numbers on dollars.”
“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 at the time. “All that really does is cover the whole gambit. ... It’s not particularly helpful.”
At the time, the AG’s findings sparked opposition furor but the controversy was quickly eclipsed by new revelations in the Senate expenses scandal that linked the Prime Minister’s then chief of staff Nigel Wright to an effort to pay off Senator Mike Duffy’s ineligible housing expenses. The opposition quickly pivoted from the $3.1-billion PSAT scandal to the much juicier Senate chicanery.
NDP MP Mathieu Ravignat (Pontiac, Que.), his party’s Treasury Board critic, said that the recent report from the Treasury Board Secretariat contradicts statements made by Prime Minister Stephen Harper (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) and Treasury Board President Tony Clement (Parry Sound-Muskoka, Ont.) at the time of the AG’s spring report.
“The president of the Treasury Board said clearly in the House of Commons, and even the Prime Minister said clearly in the House of Commons that all the spending had been accounted for,” Mr. Ravignat said. “Clearly nothing was accounted for… What’s clear is that there’s a disconnect between what they were justifying in the House and what they had to do afterwards. It’s like they’ve been playing catch-up.”
Mr. Ravignat said the government’s handling of the reconstruction was “unacceptable.”
“It puts into question transparency and accountability because if the public can’t have clear information on how monies are spent, then there’s no way of keeping this government accountable,” he said.
Accounting firm Ernst & Young provided a third-party review of the Treasury Board’s method and called it “reasonable,” although a letter from the firm to Treasury Board Secretary Yaprak Baltacioglu adds that third parties using the reconstruction’s findings “do so at their own risk.”
The Hill Times contacted the Auditor General’s Office for comment on the Treasury Board’s findings. Spokesperson Ghislain Desjardins said that the office was aware of the report but was “not in a position to comment on its content, or on the reconstruction exercise that was conducted, as we have not done further audit work in this area since the release of our spring 2013 report.”
Original Article
Source: hilltimes.com
Author: CHRIS PLECASH
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