The latest special Report of the Auditor General on the fibre-optic deal is a marshmallow.
I am frankly surprised that the man who likes to dig deep has barely scratched the surface on this particular task.
It does nothing to convince me that Newfoundlanders and Labradorians got the "best" deal for its investment - and is particularly weak when it comes to the Lobbyist Act.
First of all the project or "investment" of 15 million was not tendered and there was no request for proposals to achieve the government's stated objectives. On that basis alone we cannot determine if we got the "best" deal our money could buy.
Secondly - the financial assessment of whether or not our 15 million was needed was based on the cost of construction and did not include potential markets and revenues which could be generated for the companies involved. That is not acceptable.
Third - the Auditor General has a radio and a television and presumably keeps up with current affairs - he would then have known that this project was sold to the people as a "consortium" of companies - that did not have a name - as the party that needed the 15 million not Persona alone. In fact when the Electronic Warfare Associates report was - in part - made public - people questioned why Persona's finances could not be investigated - the response was that Rogers was a public company while Persona was private. This supposed consortium did not really exist as Persona is the owner of the system.
Fourthly - the AG determined that officials of Persona were not in violation of the Lobbyist Act as the Act states that 20% of the individuals time had to be spent lobbying. Clearly MacDonald could argue as the President of Persona - he did not spend 20% of his time lobbying for this project. However the Act provides for 2 types of lobbyists - in house - and consultant - The AG and according to him the office responsible for the lobbyist registry - found therefore there was no violation. They apparently ignored the possibility that MacDonald was acting as a consultant lobbyist which has no % of time associated with it.
MacDonald claimed he met with government officials on behalf of the consortium - Rogers - Persona - and MTS. This clearly makes MacDonald a consultant lobbyist as he was not only representing Persona - but a consortium. I therefore continue to believe the Act was violated.
Finally while there has been much fanfare from the AG office over the past year or so concerning the "spending scandal" and while the AG has been quite available for the camera - holding his own News Conferences - this report was floated out following the constituency allowance report on appropriateness of spending which had all taxpayers losing their stomachs and as such went under our radar.
This was a marshmallow report - which in the end did not provide taxpayers value for their money. In fact an imaginary News Release from the so called "consortium" probably would have looked very similar.
No recommendations - no concern about the lobbyist act - and no concern about the "best" value for our dollar.
Between the election call - the constituency spending - and conferences - and regular news events - the media did not have time to blink. I hope when the dust settles this report gets more scrutiny and more questions are asked.
Remember now - one of the key reasons government gave was that one partner of the "consortium" was a local company. Well Persona just as Cable Atlantic before it has been flipped to out-of-province interests.
For further background material on the Lobbyist Act refer to these previous posts:
Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Summary
3 comments:
If the hard core stuff that went on in Government was presented by the Auditor General half of the unsuspecting people of this province would probably die with fright.
I suspect the Auditor General has presented to us only 20 per cent of the sordid detail of what he could have presented. I am wondering what fields has he not touched on at all?
When the Auditor General was engaged by the Premier, I am wondering what was his mandate and where was he not allowed to ramble to come up with the information that he needed to come up so that we could indeed clean up government?
I trust absolutely nobody completely in Government today. Now isn’t that a sad statement for a person to have to utter?
Who charged us for cigarettes? Lotto?
Let's get a look at all the receipts and submissions that Ministers and Premiers made under their departmental money.
The AG cannot tell us this but - the MHA's should tell us if they submitted charitable donation receipts to Revenue Canada on their personal tax returns if that donation was made with their constituency allowances.
Good questions Sue, I would like those questions answered as well.
Sue do you know if the Premiers expenses were audited? If they weren't they should be. They definitely should not be immune from being audited.
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