Show Me The Money

Hot on the heels of the Auditor General's revelation that the conservatives cannot account for $3.1 billion allocated for anti terrorism the Star tells us that ninety percent of $2.4 billion paid out to consultants comes with no description of what was paid for and get this our government refuses to divulge that info.

When asked why it doesn’t follow the recommendation in the very guidelines it published, a spokeswoman at the Treasury Board Secretariat said the government cannot disclose “third-party proprietary” information or information considered private.

Tony Clement, president of the Treasury Board, did not answer questions from the Star. His press secretary said the Treasury Board Secretariat’s response is “our comment as well.”

When your government cannot or in this latest case refuses to account for how they spend billions of our hard earned money you can no longer cling to the fiction that we live in a democracy.  Given that in the past week or so we have discovered that upwards of $5.5 billion is unaccounted for,and that the Harper Conservatives can't or won't account for that massive sum screams out for a criminal investigation and a hearty round of resignations including the PM's but since we no longer live in a democracy we'll get neither.


And then there is this Star story Harper's Shadow public service

Economist David Macdonald decided to find out how many consultants, contractors and temporary workers the federal government was hiring and how much Canadians were paying for them.

It took him about a year. What he discovered was a burgeoning “shadow public service.” Last year it cost taxpayers $1.2 billion. That was 79 per cent higher than when Prime Minister Stephen Harper took power in 2006.
 Macdonald never did find out how many outside workers are doing government jobs. “The number is not accessible,” he said. “I don’t think anyone knows how many there are.”