Tuesday, February 10, 2004

OTTAWA - Today, as the federal Auditor General releases her reports on the Liberal government’s wasteful and unethical advertising and sponsorship program, and the wasteful purchase of two new jets for Cabinet ministers, Democracy Watch called on the Liberals to make key changes to the spending and government accountability system to prevent future waste.

The Liberals are expected to propose wasting more of the public’s money on an inquiry into the program, and to try to blame the waste on a few politicians and bureaucrats with ties to former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien (including recalling former Public Works Minister Alfonso Gagliano from his Denmark post).

An inquiry would be a waste because the Auditor General has already investigated fully and is expected to identify who was responsible for more than $150 million in wasteful, rule-breaking spending on the sponsorship program.  If the Auditor General has identified more spending decisions that broke laws, then the police will investigate further to lay charges against the law-breakers.  The police have already investigated and laid criminal charges following up on the Auditor General’s initial report on the program.

“An inquiry into the Liberal government’s sponsorship program will do nothing to prevent more government waste, and neither will blaming the waste on a few bad apples in the Chrétien government.” said Duff Conacher, Coordinator of Democracy Watch.  “The spending system is the scandal because it is too weak to prevent waste, and until the system changes everyone should expect more spending scandals.”

One of Paul Martin’s first acts as prime minister was scrapping the sponsorship program, but the government still has many other advertising, polling and communication programs that hire outside companies with ties to Martin and the Liberal Party.  For example, the company Earnscliffe had people working for Martin when he was Finance Minister, lobbying Martin at the same time, working for Martin’s leadership campaign and transition team, and still now working for and lobbying Martin as Prime Minister.

“If Paul Martin does not make key changes to the government’s spending system, everyone should expect that companies with ties to Martin will be involved in the next spending scandal,” said Conacher.

If Martin is serious about addressing federal government waste, he will do the following:

• give all the federal government’s accountability watchdogs (the Auditor General, the proposed new ethics watchdogs, the Information Commissioner, and the Public Service Commission) the powers to review proposed government spending above a certain amount, to penalize violators of rules, to order a clean-up of wrongdoing, and to protect and reward “whistleblowers” who report wrongdoing; and
• strengthen the access-to-information law to end the culture of secrecy, including requiring disclosure of meetings between politicians, senior officials and lobbyists.