Rick Mercer on AG Sheila Fraser

A humorous "rant"--courtesy of Canada's foremost comedian, Rick Mercer--debunking Sheila Fraser's recent ramblings in regards to the lack of preparation in government passport offices to cope with the new passport policy changes.

Says Rick of our all-knowing Auditor General of Canada:

[She] apparently has the power and the authority of the Pope, the Queen, and the Dalai Lama all wrapped up in one. I swear to God if this woman gets any more powerful, one of these days Canadians are going to wake up, she's going to be standing at the foot of our beds, yelling at us because our socks are on the floor. And she will no doubt call it some sort of "crime against humanity."

"Who Audits the Auditors?"

Such was the title of an insightful piece in yesterday’s Globe and Mail. In a few paragraphs, Brian Flemming brilliantly summed up the concern over Canada’s modern-day “accounting ethic.”

Flemming criticizes the near-limitless boundaries of “performance audits,” which “go far beyond merely adding the sums and ensuring no money has gone astray.” Instead, he argues, “they assess whether departments and Crown corporations are properly carrying out the policy objectives set for them by Parliament.” In this way:

Performance audits turn an auditor-general into a small "P" political player because, of necessity, judging performance means studying the more subjective aspects of policy and testing the limits of what can reasonably be measured.
…
Influenced mightily by Ms. Fraser, Ottawa is becoming the world capital of rules-based management and a culture of compliance. Audits and reviews proliferate; oversight bodies and watchdogs are everywhere; and politicians and bureaucrats are frozen by a fear of being studied and found wanting.

Flemming concludes by proposing a novel idea: that the Canadian government position itself to “audit the auditors” by splitting the Auditor General’s office in two:

One part could carry on the traditional financial-audit function; the other should refine its performance-review functions, and perhaps even add a security review commissioner parallel to the position Ms. Gélinas had.

Auditor as Policy Advocate – The Fraser Paradox

The latest debacle involving Canada’s self-styled “Overseers” has, this time, implicated the country’s foremost “independent watchdog”—the “no-nonsense” Auditor General of Canada, Sheila Fraser.

Last week, without a viable explanation, Fraser alone gave the boot to the current environment commissioner, Joanne Gelinas.

Fraser’s primary reason for dismissing Gelinas? “[She] had not provoked the government into adopting enough of the recommendations contained in her reports.”

Ignoring completely the issue of Fraser’s true motives, I invite you to read that statement again, folks: “[Gelinas] had not provoked the government into adopting enough of [her] recommendations.”

It is indeed a sad day for Canadian democracy when government accountants are expected to “provocatively” and aggressively pressure government in to adopting their recommendations. In today’s Canada, it seems, long gone are the days when a civil servant’s recommendation represented, well, little more than a recommendation.

Ms. Fraser would like to have us believe that the role of the Auditor is not only to provide objective and reliable information, but also to stuff that information (and associated recommendations) down the throats of our elected officials. An unofficial lobby group lurking about the ranks of our civil service.

The price to pay for "weak-kneed" Commissioners? Their jobs.

And yet, there she is, Ms. Sheila Fraser, impudently waving the flag of public accountability without a moment’s reflection on the sorry state of her own authoritarian management style...all the while having the audacity to note the obvious paradox:

"Policy, advocacy and legislative audits simply do not mix…If auditors are also policy advocates, they can easily be seen as having a policy agenda or bias that would impair the objectivity, thus the usefulness, of their audit reports to Parliament."

It may, in fact, be true that “nothing is easier than self-deceit”…

An Overseer w/o an Axe to Grind – The SARS Report

The final SARS Report, published in December 2006, was administered under the capable direction of Mr. Justice Archie Campbell. We believe that the Report is a rare example of a Canadian Overseer who did not overstep his mandate—and, instead, provided clear-cut, unbiased recommendations for public change.

The Report represented a serious attempt at reform and involved a balanced dialogue with health-care workers—who bore the brunt of the SARS virus, including the deaths of two nurses and a doctor—as well as public health officials and civil servants.

Systemic problems identified in the Report include:

• Poor internal and external communications;
• Problems with preparation and planning for an outbreak of a virulent disease;
• Accountability issues: who is in charge and who does what;
• Problems with worker and patient safety;
• Infection control, surveillance and lack of independent safety inspections;
• Resource problems including people, money, laboratories and infrastructure; and,
• Most importantly, a lack of the application of the precautionary principle that action to reduce risk should not wait for scientific certainty.

From Auditor to Auditocracy – The Nova Scotia Case

The Auditor General of Nova Scotia, Jacques Lapointe, recently released the December 2006 report on the state of that province’s financial statements and compliance with management procedures.

The Report begins by offering two contradictory accounts of the role of the Auditor General—both of which, incidentally, bring to light the very concerns we have with Canada’s “Overseers”.

On the one hand, the Auditor’s stated function is, “To serve the people of Nova Scotia and the House of Assembly by making a significant contribution to enhanced public sector accountability and performance,” and, on the other, “to help provide better government for the people of Nova Scotia.”

In an ideal world, one would have thought that the responsibility to provide for “better government” rest with the members we elect to public office. Evidently, that is not the case.

Indeed, Section 4.4 of the Report expands on this new development:

The role of audit is well understood in the provision of financial information, but is just beginning to be recognized in the provision of non-financial information. Nova Scotia is the first jurisdiction in Canada to formally request its legislative auditor to examine wait time information. We commend the Department of Health for the leadership shown in requesting this review and for its efforts to report accurate, reliable and complete wait time information.

Not only has the Auditor General of Nova Scotia overstepped his authority by agreeing to pronounce on the effectiveness of a legislative policy, but he has also, for the first time in Canada, created precedent for an emerging Auditocracy—where yet another backdoor will have opened for a non-elected body to articulate the character of our laws.

Why Public Sector Crusades Fail

This morning, we came across a United Nations publication that cleverly explains the routine failures of public sector crusades.

“A government usually launches an anti-corruption crusade,” the document begins, “with lots of fanfare and pronouncements of lofty ideals. These types of exercises are usually greeted by a lot of hope and cynicism at the same time. An expectation is created that changes will come about to punish those persons who have carried out gross corrupt acts in the past and prevent others in the future from doing likewise.”

So why do they fail?

1. First, it may be that the crusade was never a serious attempt at reform, with the government simply reacting to a scandal…. If a government is simply going through the motions, it may not put the right people or adequate resources into the crusade. This will result in the crusade not having any serious impact or simply fizzling out.
2. Second, a government may use the excuse of an anti-corruption crusade to carry out witch hunts of its opponents. Under such circumstances, people will become uneasy about whistle-blowing or exposing corruption as they do not know the real motives for such an exercise.
3. Third, a government may be very serious about fighting corruption but do not take the time and the effort to consult and get the buy-in of its social partners: businesses and civil society entities. Without a national consensus, even a genuine anti-corruption crusade driven by a government may be misconstrued or not be supported by the rest of society.
4. Fourth, some micro-level anti-corruption prescriptions may have unintended consequences or simply not thought out properly.

The report concludes by asserting, “At the political level, anti-corruption crusades have to have genuine commitment from leaders, be protected from being politicized, and be inclusive of and participatory for all stakeholders of a society.”

Tom Parkinson and the "Puritanical Public Sector Crusade"

With the recent publication of the Ontario Auditor General’s annual “Value-For-Money Audit,” the familiar rhetoric of public sector accountability is once again the talk of the land.

As The Toronto Star's Ian Urquhart reported on 9 December 2006, “terms like ‘scandalous,’ ‘astonishing fiscal and moral latitude’…and ‘a horror show,’” were used to describe the affairs of Tom Parkinson, the now former CEO of Hydro One.

The story given to Ontarians was that Parkinson, the highest-paid member of the Ontario public service, had misused a company helicopter for trips to his cottage and had swindled approximately $45,000 in expenses to his secretary’s corporate credit card.

These allegations were later untangled by the National Post’s Tom Adams on 21 December 2006:

The (Auditor) report's criticism, in fact, was aimed not at Parkinson-- who had merely followed company procedures -- but at what the auditor viewed as a poor management procedure. The press also misread the report by thinking that most of the $50,000 involved personal expenses. In fact, most related to office moving and furniture due to relocation, office supplies, business meeting expenses, and cell phone bills -- the only personal item was $11,000 for Parkinson's last ticket to see his mother. That $11,000, moreover, was taxable and tracked routinely by the payroll process to include on Parkinson's T4.

The Star article makes the case that, while clearer guidelines on the use of public funds is essential, “a puritanical crusade against all perks, gifts, expenses and purchase cards in the public sector would cause more problems than it would solve.”