Commons committee calls for second audit on ‘green slush fund’

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OTTAWA — The Commons Public Account committee is asking the auditor general to go back to the drawing board and do another, more exhaustive audit of grants given out by the so-called “green slush fund” in the last seven years.

Tuesday, members of the Public Accounts committee (PACP) approved a Conservative motion calling on Auditor General Karen Hogan to conduct a “value for money and performance” audit on work done by Sustainable Development and Technology Canada (SDTC) since Jan. 1, 2017.

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The call for the second audit into what the Conservatives have derogatorily rebranded the “green slush fund” comes three months after Hogan published a scathing report on SDTC.

Her report found that 10 of the 58 projects funded by STDC that she audited were ineligible and yet had still received a total of $59 million.

Hogan also found serious governance issues, such as 90 funding approval decisions representing nearly $76 million in which there was an apparent conflict of interest by a voting member. The ethics commissioner later found the clean tech fund’s former chairperson had violated federal conflict-of-interest rules.

The same day Hogan’s audit was published, Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne announced he was shutting down the embattled fund and folding its responsibilities into the National Research Council within one year.

But Conservative MP Rick Perkins argued Tuesday that Hogan’s report only “scratched the surface” by auditing a selection of projects and tabled a motion asking her to go back and do a more comprehensive “value for money” audit of all the funding agreements signed by SDTC since 2017.

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“We know that where there’s smoke, there’s fire, and there’s probably a lot more going on here than the 226 projects the Auditor General looked at out of the billion-dollar Liberal green slush fund,” Perkins said.

It is not uncommon for the auditor general’s audits to focus on representative samples of the government’s work to reach its findings.

In a statement, OAG spokesperson Sébastien Bois said the office would review the committee’s request but didn’t commit to a second audit of SDTC.

“The decision about what to audit is made by the Auditor General of Canada in light of our mandate, the significance of the issue, the existing audit schedule, and available resources,” he wrote.

Perkins’ motion, which was debated for over two hours and amended twice, also added roughly a dozen new witnesses to the committee’s ongoing study of the issues at SDTC.

Those included new acting board members of SDTC as well as seven directors who were found by the AG to have been in conflict of interest when they participated in a funding approval decision.

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Though she ultimately supported the final amended motion, Liberal MP Iqra Khalid accused the Conservatives of going on a “fishing expedition.”

“The members opposite feel that … if there’s smoke, there’s fire, and let’s go on this witch hunt expedition” which will ultimately “demolish public trust,” Khalid told the committee.

The motion also called for Hogan, RCMP commissioner Michael Duheme and House of Commons law clerk Michel Bédard to testify.

Last week, National Post reported that a parliamentary battle is brewing between Hogan and the House of Commons because she has so far refused to comply with a June order to hand over all documents relating to her audit of SDTC.

The RCMP also wrote a letter to the committee over the summer expressing its discomfort with the order, which ordered the law clerk to hand over all the government’s documents on SDTC to the national police force.

In the article, retired senior parliamentary counsel Stephen Chaplin argued that the order likely abused Parliament’s powers.

During Tuesday’s hearing, Khalid read portions of the article into the record while arguing that the June motion adopted by opposition parties violated both the auditor general and RCMP’s independence.

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MPs agreed to invite Hogan, Duheme and Bédard to the committee in the hopes of untangling the issue.

Testifying in front of the committee earlier in the day, National Research Council head Mitch Davies said that the idea of the organization taking over SDTC’s responsibilities began in the spring, before the auditor general published her report.

“Obviously, we had to think about it from a planning point of view and prepare ourselves for the day it was announced, to get on with the transition that was planned,” Davies said.

National Post

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