If Theresa Spence was a White Politician, She Could Have Just Fired the Auditor
Some explanation is necessary, I feel, for my post of a couple of days ago, noting the media was displaying a striking degree of hypocrisy with respect to the apparently sorry state of the Attawapiskat First Nation’s finances, and using that as a way to discredit Theresa Spence’s hunger strike. People responded in the comments section here, and on Twitter, that while I might have some valid points to make (some didn’t even go that far), two wrongs don’t make a right: just because the Attawapiskat aren’t the only ones with a shady financial record doesn’t somehow make it okay.
No it doesn’t, and Sixth Estate’s position on this matter has always been perfectly clear: leaders who abuse the public trust should be run out of town on a rail. I said as much with respect to the Attawapiskat situation too, for those who actually bothered to read the article. But I also pointed out that unless you’re an Attawapiskat Cree — and I, for one, am not — then it’s kind of a moot point. I didn’t vote for their government. Their government really is not accountable to me.
But that’s beside the point. My actual point was that a considerable number of major newspaper editors appear to have a disturbingly racist double standard on these matters. Yesterday the Globe & Mail complained in an official anonymous editorial that the Attawapiskat government was guilty of a “lack of transparency” which was hurting its cause. This is the same Globe & Mail which, during the 2011 election, argued that “the flow of information” should not be people’s primary consideration in deciding who to vote for. Instead, the same anonymous editorial writers argued on that occasion that only Stephen Harper exhibited “the bullheadedness… this country needs.”
Again, my point isn’t that Spence’s fiscal misdeeds are okay because other people have fiscal misdeeds too. My chief complaint is that the nation’s press has apparently determined that Spence’s fiscal misdeeds aren’t okay, but right-wing governments’ fiscal misdeeds are okay. This is surely why, for instance, Industry Minister Tony Clement was promoted to President of the Treasury Board in 2011 after it was revealed by the Auditor General that his department couldn’t properly account for tens of millions of dollars in “infrastructure” spending drawn from a secret slush fund which he had diverted out of the budget for border security — something which is at least on par with, if not obviously worse than, the fact that the Attawapiskat apparently didn’t save all the receipts for their housing projects.
You see, while Spence’s hunger strike is now being openly mocked in the press as a deceitful attempt to divert attention from her own financial misadventures, white politicians who have clearly never missed three straight meals in their lives, voluntarily or otherwise, are permitted to skate by with similar offences with at most a few finger-wags from a press which is bound and determined to take them at their word, treat them maturely, and endorse them at election time. It is the media’s hypocrisy which I speak of here, and it is both pathetic and disgusting.
Right now, while the Globe laments Spence’s “lack of transparency,” one of Canada’s two independent federal spending investigators, the Parliamentary Budget Officer, has had to go to court to compel the government to turn over the financial records he needs to do his legally mandated job. Kevin Page’s term expires in March, and so far the government has neither reappointed him nor started up any apparent hiring process to find a successor. Given that one of those two things should be happening, one has to wonder whether the Conservatives have decided that Canadians would be better off without a Parliamentary Budget Officer altogether.
And they’re not the only ones thinking such things. In British Columbia, for instance, the pro-Harper but nominally Liberal government of Christy Clark is in the process of pushing out its own Auditor-General, who, coincidentally, is also right now in court attempting to compel his employer to provide him with the documents they are legally required to provide him. Ironically, the government MLA who chairs the committee that decided to reject his reappointment was himself cited by the Auditor-General for “inadequate documentation” regarding his constituency office. Confronted by this apparent conflict of interest, MLA Eric Foster is claiming that he was never informed that he was under investigation and is demanding that whoever leaked the report be punished for publishing “privileged information.”
While we’re on the subject, B.C. brought auditor-general John Doyle in from Australia on the grounds that an outside critic would be good for the system. After he started digging up a little too much dirt, though, he was frostily informed by one of the guilty Cabinet ministers that that sort of fiscal transparency was not “the way we do business in Canada.” Yeah! Silly Australians, and their silly fiscal accountability.
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anonymous
The First Nations do not belong to the big club, just like most other Canadians. Boutique audits pay well and always give the results the customer demands.
It must drive club members crazy that First Nations have territorial rights enshrined in law, and that they just can’t steal the land.
The Big Club:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acLW1vFO-2Q
thwap
My post today has three links.
Aboriginal People’s Television Network interview with Chief Spence’s partner who says he would welcome a forensic audit.
Rabble.ca story about how in June 2011, Auditor General Sheila Fraser said that it’s no wonder that FN communities have trouble keeping the paperwork.
The June 11 Report itself.
http://thwapschoolyard.blogspot.ca/2013/01/more-about-that-audit.html
G.J.W.
Canada is rotten to the core with corruption. Especially since Harper’s so called, very dubious majority. Harper prorogues Parliament, so he doesn’t have to answer for his crimes.
That is for sure. Harper has to keep his books firmly closed. He knows he can’t stand-up to scrutiny. The AG can’t get the information from Harper, to even do his books. We know Chief Spence has offered her books. Harper knows he can’t do the same.
They are having the same problem in BC. Of course, the Campbell/Clark BC Liberals work for Harper. AG Doyle in BC, can’t get the information from Christy Clark, to do his books either. The BC Liberals are now getting rid of AG Doyle. In BC, we don’t even have Legislature anymore. BC is, also a Dictatorship. The Campbell/Clark BC Liberals and the Harper Cons, are one and the same party.
What Chief Spence is doing, she is doing for all of us. Harper even had the gall, to call himself a devout Christian. He said, he prays everyday. I believe Harper “prey’s” everyday.
the salamander horde
Excellent work 6th … every dart and arrow of yours has been bulls eye … .. A humble bit o advice tho ..
Keep the entire Harper, Flanagan, Manning, Alliance frothy prayerful mantra in sharp focus.. These are hardened, dull, split tongued, clove hoofed pedantic shuffling zombies in great suits moving forward as Onward Christian Warriors to soak in the forgiveness of Alberta’s healing and ethical tar sands, their hair or hairpiece coifed every day, shoes n hoofs polished by underlings, their every word or spittle n quack spew collected by parliamentary secretaries as if exalted relics from the Virgin Mary, Jehooba.. or The Chinese Foreign Office.. or the Planetary Rule of Albertawa
They’re not hard done by, and far far from it. they’re surrounded, bathed and protected by willing blind ambitious snouts. In short these are serious political and feral game players at the top of a joweled, jackal, screw you, partisan ‘we know it all/control it all’ media minding meddling, sanctimonious upper strata of a whacko food chain.
How else does a twisted creep like Tony Clement swallow over 500 mill with such a salacious and phony Muskokan smile and a pat on his purring back from fellow accomplice & past winner weasel co-twit of the year, John Baird.. our new man on all things Israeli, assault weapon export rational such as ‘its like Stevie says.. its for justice and the mining economy in Columbia’, anti-muslim barking or when the PM is just too busy somewhere’s else. Where on earth does John Baird get his ethically empty mantra from? His mommy? His daddy? His peer group? Both ? All ? From Stevie? Its seems more an unconnected dreamy political flavor of the day.
I see ten thousand braying careless remarks landing on Chief Theresa Spence just for being angry and dissed yet again..
Enough for her to count coup on poncy poli sci and economic asses of zero honesty.. lard assed, locked in greed.. easy meat …
I see mebbe a hundred or so.. legitimate salvos fired back at the 99% of cowardly, lazy corporate remora media & political pigs noisily sucking at public tit like they always do… perhaps were bred to do.. endlessly repeating invective talk talk talking points..
You just can’t trump Stephen Harper and the oily, wealthy, phony, pretenders that blow their faux smoke about ‘economy’ .. ‘the environment’ .. ‘Canada’ .. They drink 16 dollar OJ, they arrive in limos with armed guards, they don’t drive truck in Fort McMurray either.. and for sure they aint on the Rez. or for that matter, residing on the real planet the rest of us love, respect and cherish.. They’re on some fantasy island that never was, never will be..
You’re cherished n admired here, 6th …
The opportunity of comment to your space is damn special ..
and .. there’s more than a few like you .. I love that
We need just a thousand more of you and the others
Susan C
Salamander, your poetic description says it all.
R
Bc only petition for bc auditor
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/us-concerned-about-oil-tanker-traffic-from-bc/article6989791/