A good proposal for the Tories to make

[Argus]

All departmental and agency auditors will now report directly to the office of the Auditor General. They will continue to issue reports to their local departmental heads, deputy ministers and Commisioners, but they will work for the AG's office.

The expanded AG will have complete access to the books of any and all government operations, departments, agencies, trusts, crown corporations, or any private entity the government is funneling substantial amounts of money to. The AG will no longer be restricted in the number of reports the office makes, and can investigate any financial irregularity or suspected mismanagement reported to it.

The AG will be appointed by parliament with the concurrance of both the government and the official opposition, and can only be removed by agreement from both. The budget of the AG's office will be set by the house upon recommendation of the Public Accounts Committee

[Digby]

Why don't we just have death by fireing squad for any crooked liberal that gets caught . Bullets are still fairly cheap and should not use much of our tax money up .After about 20-30 of them gets it I suspect they will start changeing their ways .

[August1991]

Why don't we just have death by fireing squad for any crooked liberal that gets caught .

giggle.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes.

Argus, your post is naive beyond belief. (And I thought you were savvy, Argus. Your style is certainly smart.) You want the Auditor-General (AG) to become our Official Opposition? Huh?

Trudeau wanted a professional civil service and created a mobile EX category. DMs and ADMs moved from department to department, whereas before they belonged to one department.

As a result of this change, it just happened that PCO became the only place where anyone knew what was going on.

Maybe Trudeau did this intentionally.

----

Argus, be serious. With your idea, the next gang will simply subvert the AG and her/his bureaucrats. As Trudeau made the PCO.

I prefer the American system of Congessional (or Parliamentary) review. This should be written into our Constitution. Canadian voters somewhere will always send a few weird MPs to Ottawa. Weird MPs who will make a stink.

[Bakunin]

Thats what i always taught. An independant organisation should deal with evrything that as to be transparent and independant like the budget and public contract. And the only way to know there is no corruption is to have a deputy from all the party to assist to any decision taken by the organism.

The only thing political party should be able to do when thei are in power is to take political decision.

[Argus]

Argus, your post is naive beyond belief. (And I thought you were savvy, Argus.  Your style is certainly smart.)  You want the Auditor-General (AG) to become our Official Opposition? Huh?

No. I want the AG to become our General Accounting Office. And remember, it wasn't the civil servants, the auditors who were subverted by liberals, it was the big shots. The auditors did their jobs. The problem was the departments they worked for ignored them. If the auditors reported to the AG's office or were required by law to pass on their reports to the AG's office things would have been different.

Argus, be serious. With your idea, the next gang will simply subvert the AG and her/his bureaucrats. As Trudeau made the PCO.

Why do you suppose the present gang, or the ones before them, didn't subvert the AG's office? The thing is, the AG has no power, so it's not somewhere high flying bureaucrats want to go. It does one thing, and that's to audit what other departments spend. It's a home of bean counters and accountants. And as long as the people at top - the AG - are honest and have integrity, the system will too.

I prefer the American system of Congessional (or Parliamentary) review.  This should be written into our Constitution.

Won't work in Canada. We have parliamentary committees now, but they're largely useless. The US political system does not have the same level of party discipline as we have here. Committees here say and do and find whatever the government of the day tells them to say, do and find. Just look at what happened with the Public Accounts Committee, which basically found the Adscam mess was exaggerated, and limited to a few civil servants - as Paul Martin ordered them to waste time re-interviewing safe witnesses, and then close down before any of the dangerous ones would testify.