Greg Weston of the Ottawa Sun woke me up better than my coffee did this morning with his column, “Grits continue to hide billions”. Hey Americans: “Grits” is Liberals, not a pancake made of corn meal. Hang on…
The next time Paul Martin proclaims how very, very committed he is to transparency and accountability in public spending—watch for it ad nauseam when the PM appears at the Adscam inquiry later this week—someone should whack him over the head with a copy of the auditor general’s report.
It doesn’t much matter which report.
Every year since 1996, the auditor general has pounded the Liberal government, over and over, for hiding billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money in so-called “independent foundations.”
Next week, Auditor General Sheila Fraser is expected to take another round out of the Martin government over the same issue in her latest compendium of government waste, mismanagement and general stupidity.
Good thing, too. At last count, Fraser tallied a staggering $9.1 billion of taxpayers’ cash that the Liberals have stashed in foundations over the past eight years.
That’s roughly the equivalent of about $1,000 from every taxpayer in the country. It is also far more than even the Liberals have been able to spend.
Fraser recently noted that even though the government publicly lists the money as having been spent, $7.7 billion is still in the foundations’ bank accounts.
But most of all, the federal watchdog of public spending is rabid over the lack of anything resembling the transparency and accountability that taxpayers should reasonably expect.
The foundations are essentially fronts for government cheque-writing on a massive scale, providing handouts to all manner of no doubt worthy causes from garbage recycling to telemedicine.
But don’t ask how it’s disbursed or to whom.
The books of the foundations are conveniently exempted from the Access to Information Act, and are even off limits to the AG.
Unlike the usual flow of funds from the treasury, the government has simply filled the foundations’ bank accounts and given them up to 10 years to spend it all.
But not to worry—our money is in the good hands of foundation boards packed with qualified Liberal appointees. […]
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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