The Treasury Board President of Gazebos and Funny Funneling

Steve was evidently so pleased with ShamWow Tony Clement's ability to put one over on Auditor General Sheila Fraser by leaving no paper trail of the funneling of $50M of our tax dollars through his own riding office - money purportedly intended for G8 border security - that right after the election Steve made him the boss of all our money - President of the Treasury Board - responsible for ethics, transparency, accountability, and the financial and administrative management of government.

Collateral damage : the compromising of public servants from the Department of Foreign Affairs, Industry Canada, and Infrastructure Canada who may or may not have helped him do it. Now we'll never know. Certainly they denied their involvement to Sheila Fraser but they were there at the meetings with ShamWow Tony, the mayor, and the manager of the Deerhurst Resort when - as Minister of Pork, Gazebos, and Funny Funneling - Clement recommended 33 local projects to then Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Accountability John Baird, who approved 32 of them.

According to the new AG John Wiersema, apparently having a majority means never having to say you're sorry.

Hill Times . Toronto Star . Pogge. 
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Wednesday Update : Hill Times again.
Seems the municipal leaders in Tony's select gazebo-vetting committee awarded their own projects $41.4-million of the $50-million total. Municipalities not on the committee got to share the $2.5-million remainder.
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The G8 ShamWow Legacy Porkbarreling Fund

Of the $83-million Border Infrastructure Fund for "investments in infrastructure to reduce border congestion" approved by parliament in 2009 for the G8 summit, $50-million of it was somehow diverted into ShamWow Tony Clement's riding, 300 kilometres away from the border.

The Harper government had "misinformed" Parliament about the fund, said outgoing Auditor General Sheila Fraser in her G8 draft report in April, a word since expunged from the final report under the new acting AG.
It was simply the most efficient way to get funding to Tony's riding for the G8 leaders to spend 48 hours in, Steve explained last week.

However, many of the 32 projects jointly chosen by ShamWow Tony, the mayor of Huntsville, and the manager of the Deerhurst Resort were nowhere near the G8 site either :

— $274,000 on public toilets 20 kilometres from the summit site in Huntsville.

— $100,000 on a gazebo an hour's drive away.

— $1.1 million for sidewalk and tree upgrades 100 kilometres away.

— $194,000 for a park 100 kilometres away.

— $745,000 on downtown improvements for three towns nearly 70 kilometres away.

$1.8M in public funds was also spent upgrading the watermains and repaving the driveway to the 760-acre Deerhurst Resort : That's How You get a Road Done, while an additional amount went to installing an 8 km wire fence around the resort for G8 security.

All of which must have been good selling points when it was put on the market two weeks after the summit.
"We picked it up for $26-million," said new owner and Israeli entrepreneur Gil Blutrich of Skyline International Development, after noting the previous owners spent $40-million upgrading the resort for the summit.

Meanwhile, wearing his other hat as Treasury Board president, ShamWowTony is in charge of cutting $4-billion per year in federal spending. On Monday 92 federal auditor positions across Canada were eliminated and the department of Audit Services Canada was scrapped entirely. The reason given was that the auditing done by these government watchdogs in charge of ensuring taxpayers’ dollars are properly spent could be done more cheaply by a private sector company, should the government decide to, you know, hire one.

The RCMP are apparently considering whether to launch an investigation into what acting Auditor General John Wiersema called a "very unusual and troubling" complete absence of documentation for the Border Infrastructure Fund Greasing ShamWowTony's Riding Fund. Sure they are.
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