SAT FEB 19 2000
David Stonehouse
The Ottawa Citizen
FULL STORY:-
SAT FEB 19 2000
David Stonehouse
The Ottawa Citizen
Mounting evidence of political interference in federal handouts means the only way to end Liberal porkbarrelling is for voters to turf the government, the Official Opposition said yesterday.
"I would hate to think that we just have to live with this -- with public money being squandered and being used as a pork barrel. I'm not prepared to put up with it, and I dare say that a lot of other Canadians aren't either," Reform MP Diane Ablonczy said yesterday.
As opposition politicians continued to attack the Chretien Liberals over revelations of political meddling in Human Resources Development grants, Ms. Ablonczy suggested the only way to put an end to the Shovelgate scandal is for the public to oust the government in the next election.
"Only two things will save us. One is senior civil servants coming forward with the evidence and blowing the whistle on their political bosses. So far, that hasn't happened. Or, you would have to have a change of government with a new mindset," she said yesterday in an interview.
"We need to ruthlessly expose this kind of politicization of the spending of public money. It is wrong, it is corrupt and it is very dangerous for the country.
"You get into a situation where public affairs become run like a power cabal. And we know that leads to abuse. It leads to perverse results," she said. "It is a recipe for social and democratic disaster."
A sound democracy depends on the frugal management of the public purse, said one economist last night, reacting to Ms. Ablonczy's charges.
University of Toronto economics professor Jack Carr said democracy would be better served if the government just got rid of such programs and lowered taxes instead.
"I think it tells you that free-spending governments generally waste a lot of our money, and what you want to do is restrain governments from spending, period. There is no way you can give spending just on well-meaning projects," Mr. Carr said.
"We say, 'Well, it is necessary?' But when you take a look at what these grants are given to, I think the public is beginning to see that, in fact, there are a lot of arbitrary grants that aren't creating a lot of jobs.
"They may be moving jobs from one place to another. They are given to supporters. They are giving more to the ridings of the government in power. There are huge abuses -- and that is the nature of the beast," he said.
"I think the lesson to be learned is that you don't want any of it."
A 1997 audit of 25 Transitional Jobs Fund grants in Atlantic Canada and Quebec warned Human Resources that the $300-million program was burdened by pressure from MPs and that normal approvals were skirted in some cases.
"Pressures on the staff to expedite the approval process have come from the political level and commitments have been made that HRDC staff must then follow," the review by Consulting and Audit Canada said. "Some of the more problematic projects did not go through the established approval process."
Human Resources Development Minister Jane Stewart has previously insisted that there has been no political meddling in how money was handed out by her department.
After releasing an internal audit last month revealing grants and contributions worth nearly $1-billion from various departmental programs was mishandled, she said there was no evidence of interference.
The audit, which sparked the Shovelgate scandal, found monitoring of projects and spending was weak or non-existent, key documents were missing from files and contracts were found lacking.
When confronted about the 1997 audit of the jobs fund during Question Period yesterday, Ms. Stewart was no longer denying political involvement -- at least by MPs, who must be consulted before job grants are approved.
"Indeed, it talks about the role politicians play in the Transitional Jobs Fund. Indeed, this is quite unique," Ms. Stewart said. "But the review did not, in its recommendations, suggest that politicians -- local Members of Parliament -- who have information and knowledge about their ridings should not be consulted in this undertaking."
But Mr Carr agreed with Ms. Ablonczy that the only way to get rid of government spending abuse is for the voters to take control.
"In a democracy, what happens is you elect a government which will say, 'We will not have these programs.' Ultimately, the accountability is in the ballot box. And the way the public will hold the Liberals accountable for this is if they think there is a huge miscarriage of justice, they will elect somebody that will not engage in these programs. That is ultimately the way the public has control."
Aside from warning the government that the jobs fund was under pressure from politicians, the 1997 audit said a $6-million grant to tree planting and thinning projects in New Brunswick did not fit within rules for the fund. It said the money was only creating seasonal jobs, not fuelling lasting employment -- the very purpose of the fund.
Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe accused the Liberals of using that money to try to buy votes -- an accusation Ms. Stewart denied.
"Let me also confirm for the honourable member something he knows very well -- that these projects exist not only in ridings held by Liberal members but very significantly in ridings held by Bloc members as well," she said.
At the same time as trying to fend off the audit's finding that the job grant approvals were subject to political pressure, the Liberals were fending off Reform revelations that the Prime Minister's office had encouraged Grit MPs to take credit for Human Resources handouts, even in non-Liberal ridings.
The communications plan, orchestrated by former Chretien communications director Peter Donolo, urged Liberals to show up to events and places that had received money from Ottawa to generate publicity for themselves.
"Does this not just prove that this billion dollar boondoggle is more about buying political support than about creating jobs?" Reform MP Grant McNally charged in the House yesterday.
But Deputy Prime Minster Herb Gray said: "It is part of the ordinary democratic process" for politicians to show up to such events.
The Tories said yesterday that they were not surprised at the growing evidence of political ties to the handouts.
New Brunswick MP Jean Dube, the Conservative critic for human resources, said it is fuelling his determination to get more information about how the government has handled grant money.
"From what we have seen, the actions of this government and their reluctance to release information, leads you to believe that they have something to hide," Mr. Dube said. "Obviously, if the Minister has misled Canadians and misled the House on these very serious issues, she should resign."
It is not the first time political links were discovered.
An evaluation report of the Transitional Jobs Fund done for the government in 1998 said people involved with the fund "expressed concern with respect to some political presence in the program at times."
It also said while "a certain amount of political involvement'' is expected "there was nevertheless some uneasiness among some respondents regarding projects which may have been approved for political reasons rather than based on the strength of the business plan."
Late last year, Reform obtained an e-mail from 1997 in which an aide to then-Human Resources Minister Pierre Pettigrew told federal officials he had "no choice" but to approve job-creation grants for two inns in Prime Minister Jean Chretien's riding, even though some of the jobs to be created were not eligible for the program.
A series of stories in the National Post stretching back over more than a year has raised questions about federal grants to Mr. Chretien's riding and about government money that went to a Quebec businessman who received grants after purchasing an inn once owned by the prime minister.