A few billion dollars went missing in Ottawa over a period of eight years, but after a government watchdog finally uncovered the consistently shoddy accounting, only a few weeks passed before everybody stopped asking about where the big pile of money ended up.
At stake is $3.1 billion in anti-terror funding that, according to Auditor General Michael Ferguson’s spring report, lacked any paper trail. After the terrorist attacks in September 2001, the federal government budgeted $12.9 billion of anti-terror funding across several departments. The years-long effort was known as the Public Security and Anti-Terrorism Initiative. Of that sum, the auditor general could only determine where $9.8 billion was spent. At the time, the opposition raised a stink in the House of Commons, appalled at the government’s response that the money was properly reported and accounted for. They attacked Treasury Board President Tony Clement as being managerially and fiscally incompetent. Both sides of the aisle cited Ferguson’s words in their own interests, and the argument reached a stalemate.
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/the-missing--3-1b-no-one-is-asking-about-202810163.html
No comments:
Post a Comment