Auditors from Deloitte appeared before the Senate’s internal economy committee yesterday morning, and revealed a couple of things – that yes, senior Partner Michael Runia did try calling them, but they didn’t tell him anything, thus preserving their “ethical wall.” Also, their audit operated in a closed system and that there wasn’t any way for there to be any leaks of draft copies. But when the Liberals on the committee tried to move a motion for Runia to appear to explain himself, Conservatives on the committee blocked it, saying that they didn’t have the expertise to conduct an investigation parallel to the RCMP’s. Nor has there been any call for Senator Gerstein to appear to explain himself either. The Liberals will be moving a motion in the full Senate next week to give the committee the mandate to pursue these questions, but we’ll see if there is enough support. Kady O’Malley finds three key points from that testimony, and makes the relevant connections to the Wright testimony in the RCMP ITO. Incidentally, PMO has hired three different law firms to deal with the ClusterDuff file.
Remember that “missing” $3.1 billion that the Auditor General identified last spring, all of it anti-terror funds that couldn’t be accounted for? Well, now it is. Treasury Board went and found all of that money, some of it going to places like CBSA as part of funding envelopes that weren’t properly marked as anti-terror funding, and other funding lapsed and was returned. But I doubt that this revelation will make nearly the same splash.
John Geddes writes about the expectation by Canadians that we’re living in some kind of era of rampant government corruption, when by any objective measure, we are among the least corrupt countries on the planet.
The Information Commissioner issued a report on the use of SMS text messages and PIN-to-PIN BlackBerry messages, and how they are being lost into the aether because they are not properly archived, and she doesn’t have the powers to sanction anyone who ignores the rules around keeping all documents and communications related to government decisions.
During QP yesterday, Justice Minister Peter MacKay claimed that his office consulted with the Privacy Commissioner on their “cyberbullying”/lawful access bill and that she gave it the green light. In fact, they did not consult, and the Commissioner has concerns about several parts of the bill.
The Environment Minister said that the oil and gas regulations still aren’t ready because she wants to “get this right for Canada.”
Aboriginal Affairs minister Bernard Valcourt hints that he might not table the First Nations Education Act after all since he’s having a hard time getting sign-on from First Nations groups.
The head of CSE was before a Commons committee yesterday, but wouldn’t comment on the report that CSE was working with the NSA to spy on the Toronto G20 summit.
A New Brunswick Mountie, who has been prescribed medical marijuana to deal with PTSD, smoked a joint during a ceremonial event while in his red serge. (Why he needs to smoke them rather than bake them into brownies is beyond me). Scandal! Cue the Conservative ministers piling on to denounce his bad example! He gets his uniform confiscated, but says that he did it as a protest for the way that the RCMP are handling the issue of mental health within the Force.
Speaking of the RCMP, documents show how much political pressure they were under from Conservative staffers during the Alberta floods when they were seizing those unattended firearms from inside homes during routine police inspections. Never mind that it was part of their job and that other people in town voluntarily surrendered their guns to the police for safekeeping for the duration of the crisis – anything to stoke the paranoia in the base that we’re some kind of police state intent on seizing their guns.
Three military suicides this week are showing that there is still a long way to go for the Canadian Forces to tackle this issue, and reminds us that there are still 50 inquiries into suicides that have not been concluded.
The government has sold Macdonald House – home to part of the Canadian High Commission and residences in London – to an Indian developer for $530 million. Foreign Affairs will consolidate its diplomatic presence at Canada House in Trafalgar Square. This will also count as one of the asset sales that Jim Flaherty is counting on to balance the budget.
Brent Rathgeber writes about the “clarity” of the issue of what Harper would have known about the ClusterDuff affair, and that the Senate was never designed to be a PMO branch plant.
Adam Goldenberg notes that for all the partisan frothing at the mouth over Trudeau’s “hope and fear” comments, that Jack Layton quite effectively campaigned negatively while convincing people that he wasn’t, and that Trudeau has been doing the very same.
And possibly inspired by my own tweet about the Auditor General’s angry face, PostMedia collects a series of apparently rage-filled portraits of the AG.