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'Trust us' isn't good enough when it comes to... - Tuesday, March 30, 2004 at 14:42

PUBLICATION:  Vancouver Sun
DATE:  2004.03.27
EDITION:  Final
SECTION:  Editorial
PAGE:  C6
SOURCE:  Vancouver Sun

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'Trust us' isn't good enough when it comes to tax money

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In December of 2002, Auditor-General Sheila Fraser issued a report that captured headlines across the country with the revelation that the controversial gun registry had turned into a billion-dollar money pit.

Lost in public outrage was another finding in her semi-annual report, which in retrospect ought to have been taken more seriously.

Ms. Fraser reported that financial management reform has been "an elusive goal in the government of Canada for 40 years."

Given the revelations now pouring out of Ottawa, particularly in regard to the latest slush fund operated out of the Prime Minister's Office for at least the past decade, her prophetic report is worth another look.

Earlier this week, Finance Minister Ralph Goodale used his budget speech to pledge reform.

In words we might have used, he said "Canadians deserve the utmost in accountability, transparency and value for their hard-earned tax dollars."

Ms. Fraser has shown us that we have been getting none of the above.

The latest atrocity illustrates just how badly we are being served.

It matters not whether, as Prime Minister Paul Martin now alleges, the secret, $50-million-a-year national unity reserve was started under Brian Mulroney or after Jean Chretien came to power.

What matters is that we have a financial system in place that allowed perhaps half a billion of those tax dollars to be spent by the Prime Minister's Office without any public accounting whatsoever.

We say perhaps half a billion dollars because it appears that the management of the money was so slipshod that not even the current holder of that office has been able to say how much was spent or what it was spent on.

In her 2002 report, Ms. Fraser noted that only one-third of the federal departments she reviewed had senior financial officers with professional accounting credentials.

Those officers presided over departments that spent almost two-thirds of the government's total operating budget of $180 billion.

Now, as new revelations of the sponsorship scandal seem to shred almost daily the little that remains of this government's credibility for sound financial management, Ottawa seems finally to be acting on Ms. Fraser's recommendations from 2002.

It is all part of the rearguard action Mr. Martin is fighting to regain the trust of Canadians.

But Mr. Martin should note this: Where money is at play, the notion of trust is best served by systems that require no trust.

We shouldn't have to trust the finance minister when he says our money is being well looked after.

Trust requires that we can see for ourselves.

Trust requires at the very least that opposition politicians are able to tell from the government books where the money is going.

Mr. Goodale assures us that such systems are going to be put in place. He assures us that the government will be hiring professionals to oversee spending and beefing up the office of the comptroller-general.

We'll see.

The track record is not good. In her 2002 report, Ms. Fraser reported that the Treasury Board secretariat estimated that it had spent $635 million on implementing financial systems, yet she could not verify that amount because of concerns about "the completeness and accuracy" of the information on which the estimate was based.

There will be times when a government can legitimately spend taxpayers' money without divulging in detail where the money has gone. But those times should be few and far between, and even then there should be Parliamentary oversight.

So we're prepared to trust this government -- or any other government, for that matter -- only when we no longer have to.

That day will come when Ms. Fraser is able to report that the decades-old struggle to control and properly account for the spending of tax dollars is finally over.