PING!
Posted on 05/17/2006 10:43:16 AM PDT by GMMAC
Why should we ever trust the Liberals again?
Andrew Coyne
National Post
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
A number of issues have surfaced to date in the Liberal leadership race: Afghanistan, day care, the environment, bilingualism. But if the candidates for party leader would like also to be Prime Minister one day, or to see another Liberal Prime Minister in their lifetime, they would do well to address themselves to another question: why Canadians should ever trust their party again.
Perhaps the Grits had hoped that memories of the sponsorship scandal would begin to fade, or that, having turfed them from office, the public would be in a mood to let bygones be bygones. Well, maybe -- until yesterday's report by the Auditor-General.
It was, I need hardly recall, a report by the same Auditor-General two years ago that confirmed the existence of a widespread conspiracy to evade normal government financial controls with regard to the sponsorship program, ostensibly because of the program's "sensitivity" but to the enormous and unsurprising benefit of the Liberal party and its friends. The program was never reported to Parliament. Hundreds of millions of dollars were shovelled out the door without the faintest notion of what these expenditures were supposed to achieve, still less with the requirement to show evidence of having achieved it. Internal audits detailing a pattern of suspicious activity were suppressed or altered before release.
Nor was this the first time the Auditor-General had come across this sort of thing. Earlier reports had detailed a similar massive breakdown in oversight at the department of Human Resources Development, one consequence of which had been to allow a shadowy network of Liberal Party officials to oversee the distribution of "job creation" grants in the province of Quebec. But, as with the sponsorship scandal, there was no proof that those at the top knew what their underlings were up to. Rather, they could be blamed for failures of program design that permitted such wrongdoing to flourish.
So in some ways, the Auditor-General's latest report is the most damning of all. There is no way to deny or minimize the stark reality of what it contains: Liberal cabinet ministers colluded in a scheme of deception -- fraud is another word -- to hide the mounting costs of the gun registry. They did so, what is more, not to avoid mere embarrassment or criticism, but to defy the will of Parliament. Having been told they could not spend more than a certain figure, they did, and cooked the books to conceal what they had done.
Warned, in early 2004, that the costs of the program that year would exceed the amount authorized by Parliament to the tune of nearly $22-million, government officials conspired to have the excess spending counted against future years' budgets -- future, as in after the impending election -- rather than seek Parliament's approval for the extra funds, and have to disclose the overrun. When government accountants protested this was against the rules, ministers had their legal staff look for loopholes to justify it -- unsuccessfully, it appears. The Auditor-General concludes their actions were not only in violation of generally accepted accounting principles, but of the Financial Administration Act.
This was not a mere failure of oversight. These were not rogue bureaucrats, or junior party officials. These were decisions taken at the top levels of government, by ministers and their advisers. And while responsibility for the sponsorship scandal could arguably be laid at the feet of Jean Chretien, the Auditor-General says the phony accounting happened on both Mr. Chretien's and Paul Martin's watches.
This has nothing to do with the gun registry, its merits or demerits. This is about responsible government. This is about whether we can truly be called a democracy -- whether those we entrust with executive power are answerable to the Parliament we elect.
This is hardly the first case, after all, in which Parliament has been informed of government expenditures long after they have been made. Budget after budget, up to and including the last, have misrepresented the government's fiscal position by stuffing billions of dollars in current spending into previous fiscal years, circumventing that most hallowed of Parliamentary prerogatives: the power to scrutinize and approve how government spends the money it takes from taxpayers, before it is spent.
But these were at least open in their contempt for Parliament. And, at least in theory, Parliament could put a stop to such flimflammery if it chose. In the current example, by contrast, neither the public or Parliament had any knowledge of the overrun, or the misreporting, until it was too late. It was a deliberate act of deception, a calculated defiance of Parliament, and a fraud upon the public. That the program was also catastrophically mismanaged is, in the circumstances, almost an afterthought.
The Auditor-General was unable to verify which minister or ministers were involved: solicitor-client privilege and all that. I think they have an obligation to step forward. And to tell us why we should trust them not do so again.
ac@andrewcoyne.com
© National Post 2006
PING!
Well, liberals have a mental disorder. Not only that, but some are more psychotic than others. There is no hope.
-
Bwahahahahahaha!!!
It seems to me that those who vote Liberal are invariably zealots, intolerant of anyone who disagrees with them, and invariably filled with delusions of moral superiority. I hope for everyone's sake they are now on the endangered species list.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.