Angry in the Great White North

The story of the deliberately hidden cost overruns of the gun registry was one of the last scandals to hit the dying Paul Martin government. In fact, it wasn't properly investigated until after the 2006 election that saw the Paul Martin Liberals removed from power. A Public Accounts Committee investigation took the unusual step of censuring Anne McLellan, the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, for not informing parliament of the overruns.

A parliamentary committee blamed former Liberal public safety minister Anne McLellan for not informing Parliament about the true cost of the firearms centre and blasted the senior bureaucrats who came up with the accounting scheme to hide those costs.

"Evidence suggests that the minister knew, and she did nothing to ensure Parliament was fully informed and for that she must accept responsibility," concluded a majority report by the public accounts committee tabled this week.

Anne McLellan is a private citizen now, one of the Liberal ministers kicked out of office by the voters in February 2006.

Nevertheless, the Liberals on the committee rejected the move to censure Anne McLellan, instead saying, in effect, that she was not told and so could not inform Parliament of any problems:

Committee Members heard public servants explain the technical process by which officials deliberated as to the appropriate treatment of the CFIS II costs. This included the February 2004 decision by the Deputy Minister of Public Safety to seek a legal opinion on the matter, which with other evidence convinced the responsible officials that the costs should not be charged to the current year appropriation and that consequently supplementary estimates were not required. The former Commissioner of the Canadian Firearms Centre told the Committee that as a result of this error he did not recommend to the Minister that supplementary estimates were necessary. He further explained that as Deputy Head he was responsible for the decision and signed off on the Firearms Centre accounts with an attestation.

The Committee did not establish that the former Minister bore any duty to inform Parliament about the deliberations of her officials. The Committee can not be justified in criticizing the former Minister for failing to inform Parliament about a non-existent supplementary estimate she was never advised by officials to request.

So what did William V Baker, the Commissioner of Firearms, actually tell his minister, Anne McLellan? Thanks to Access to Information, I have this memo from William Baker to Anne McLellan dated January 30, 2004, and marked secret. It reads in part:

I am writing to advise you of a significant matter that may impact on the Canada Firearms Centre's (CAFC) ability to operate within its 2003-2004 funding allocation.

[T]here have been dramatic increases in the anticipated cost of the development and ongoing operation of the system. Solution development has increased from $32M to $70M while the estimated 15 year cost of operating the IT and enabling technology has increased from $96M to $213M.

As recent as November 2003, Treasury Board approved interim funding for continued development of the new solution for the remainder of the year. With the spending authority approved by Treasury Board, we were unable to advance work on the project. This led to the realization of deficiencies in the functional capacity of the system. Therefore, at the beginning of January, we undertook a risk analysis of the new solution, which identified a need for significant additional work, and associated expenditure.

Better yet, the minister was told in the same memo that the charges would have to be allocated to this fiscal year, which of course meant going to Parliament for a supplementary estimate:

The situation has been complicated by an accounting interpretation that was just confirmed today from the Treasury Board Secretariat that all costs incurred to date on the project (including those incurred in the last fiscal year) would have to be charged to the current fiscal year....If the existing contract situation is retained, this change in accounting treatment would mean that the current year budget would be some $17M short to meet costs incurred to date in developing the new solution.

Now remember, in January 2004, the country was preparing for a general election that everyone knew was around the corner. As it was, the election was held in June, and by not revealing the overruns, but hiding them with dodgy accounting, Anne McLellan spared the Liberal government a potentially major embarrassment, and quite possibly saved her own Alberta seat.

As it turned out, the Liberals won the 2004 election, but only with a minority government. Who knows what would have happened had Anne McLellan done what William Baker advised her to do in this memo?

Here is what the Liberal Party said of censuring Anne McLellan:

The former minister's duty was to refrain from interference, to rely on the expert advice of her officials, and either approach parliament for supplementary estimates or not depending on that advice. That the advice was flawed is not acceptable grounds for a personal indictment of the minister.

The advice of her official, the Commissioner of Firearms named by the Liberal Party dissenting report, was that the budget was short, that the money was needed, and that it would have to be included in this year's budget.

It's all right there in the memo.

Maybe one of Stephane Dion's first moves as Liberal Party leader, so intensely interested in renewing the party, would be to come clean on Anne McLellan's decision just ahead of the 2004 election, based on accurate and not flawed advice, to not inform Parliament of the cost overruns and of the need for yet more funding for the gun registry. Let Anne McLellan take responsibility for her actions, instead of having the bureaucracy take the fall. If Anne McLellan won't take responsibility, at the very least Stephane Dion can assign it to her, and make it clear that, in this particular case, Canadian taxpayers were well-served by the civil service, it not by the minister at the time.