Roundup: At long last, the audit

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And after an agonizing period of leaks that did probably the maximum damage possible, the Auditor General’s report was finally released yesterday, and it was, well, honestly not that much of a bombshell or all that damning once you calm down from the breathless hysteria and cheap outrage over taxpayer’s money and start putting everything into context. Yes, there were some questionable expenses, and you’d pretty much find that in any organization (most especially elected ones). Sure, he made some comments about the fact that they sometimes charged for meals when there should have been one provided (but this is where things start to get nitpicky) or said that some were careless about cell phone roaming charges (which seems to be a pretty common irritant about any consumer judging from the number of news pieces about it). Senator Colin Kenny, one of the files the AG flagged for further investigation, refutes some of the claims (and this is one of the two that the AG noted he wanted further investigation on because of contradictory evidence). The five current and former Manitoba senators named in the audit refuted their claims to the CBC. The AG did make a big deal about the institution being self-policing without seeming to have any awareness about parliamentary supremacy or self-governance being an important consideration for the practice of Responsible Government – you know, something that is kind of a Big Deal. The Citizen has a Q&A with Ferguson, who says an audit of the House of Commons would likely be prohibitively expensive (but I still say that every MP who sanctimoniously denounces the Senate over this should have his or her own books subjected to the same audit). Liberal Senator Hervieux-Payette did manage to get through a motion to have the Senate rules committee investigate the leaks of the report, seeing as it undermined the presumption of innocence and having a fair defence for those senators named. I would be extremely curious to know who was leaking, so that it would give one a clue about what their endgame was.

Good reads:

  • The Duffy trial heard from a veteran administrator about pre-signed expense forms (apparently also a common practice for MPs) and Senate Finance checking the math.
  • Paul Wells ponders the meaning of the return of Gilles Duceppe.
  • Bill C-51 passed the Senate yesterday, and Craig Forcese and Kent Roach wonder why Canada can’t get national security laws right.
  • Stephen Harper met with Poland’s prime minister in Warsaw, and she let slip ahead of the press embargo about his visit to a Canadian frigate in the Baltic Sea.
  • Aaron Wherry considers the Senate in a way that doesn’t resolve in his usual reflexive abolition nonsense.
  • Mike Moffatt tries to see how killing the “tampon tax” affects the tariff code, and finds that it’s not an easy answer.

Odds and ends:

Police-reported hate crimes are down – unless you’re a Muslim.

Apparently our government needed to appoint a “car-czar” to deal with the auto industry. Really? (And can we please stop calling them czars?)

2 thoughts on “Roundup: At long last, the audit”

  1. I deliberately ignored this whole tempest in a teapot. When you do the math, it amounts to a few dollars a day. Not only that – they spent TWO MILLION DOLLARS PLUS to uncover a million or so in questionable spending. This is yet another Harper style hatchet job. Clearly, he wants the Senate out of the way and what better way to do that than to spend millions of the oh-so-holy taxpayers’ money to make them look like thieves.

    • Actually, they spent $24M to uncover less than $1M in questionable spending.

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