February 10, 2002

The pork barrel sloppeth over

By GREG WESTON -- Sun Media

OTTAWA -- Pity poor John Manley. Pity poor Canadian taxpayers.

As predicted in this space a few weeks ago, the Liberal government's newly anointed deputy prime minister and resident Mr. Clean is being stuck with responsibility for managing a $2 billion barrel of pork that is already starting to reek of old-style Grit politics, even before the first cheque has been cut.

The money was to have flowed through a supposedly arm's length federal front - the Strategic Infrastructure Foundation.

But now we learn all that dough is being dumped into a special slush fund, not even controlled by a government department, but by Manley "in consultation with his colleagues."

Walter Robinson, director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, offered a reaction common in political circles last week: "Our greatest fears will now come true. Politicians will control the $2 billion allotted to this foundation, and we have no doubt that it's going to be canoe museums ... and Shawinigan-style fountains across the land," referring to two of the Liberals' more infamous boondoggles.

ANNOUNCED WITH FANFARE

Creation of the Strategic Infrastructure Foundation was announced with much fanfare in Finance Minister Paul Martin's federal budget barely two months ago.

This potential sinkhole for massive amounts of tax money, we were told, would focus on "strategic infrastructure in order to finance large projects across Canada." In other words, the foundation was designed to pave the land in federal handouts on a particularly grand scale.

The Infrastructure Foundation was the latest of seven similar agencies the Liberal government has set up and funded with a staggering $8 billion of taxpayers' money.

As discussed in this space previously, the theory is that running government programs through an arm's-length organization with an independent board isolates the public purse from political machinations. In reality, it also isolates billions in government spending from any meaningful public scrutiny, while foundation boardrooms stacked to the rafters with Liberal appointees mock any notion of "arm's length."

As Auditor General Sheila Fraser pointed out with harsh criticism only months ago, the books of these foundations are both off-limits to the scrutiny of her office and exempt under the Access to Information Act.

No matter, some time after Manley was given responsibility for the Infrastructure Foundation last month - we have it on good authority he did not ask for the job, "he was told" - a funny thing happened on the way to The Trough. The Prime Minister's Office, in consultation with Manley, decided to junk the foundation idea, and deposit the entire $2 billion - that's $2,000,000,000 - directly into the deputy PM's political kitty.

We are now hearing that the finance minister is fuming over all this. (No surprise there - Paul Martin spent fully a third of our interview after his December budget extolling the virtues of stuffing billions into these foundations, with no way to get it back, as a way to hog-tie the fiscal policies of future governments. And this guy wants to be the next prime minister?)

Martin claimed in the Commons this week that in the two months since the Infrastructure Foundation was announced in his budget, "a number of interesting propositions and proposals have come in from municipalities and from provinces.

"We are starting to take a look at those. It was deemed they would be of such complexity that a government-to-government action would be required."

THE LARGER ISSUE

The derisive howling from the opposition benches was predictable and justifiable. But let's not let the process of squandering public money obscure the far larger issue here.

Getting rid of the Infrastructure Foundation was a good thing - at least taxpayers will now know how their money is being wasted. Giving the infrastructure program to a government department probably would have been better than handing it over to Manley - public servants at least offer some buffer between politics and the public purse.

But the best outcome would have been scrapping this monster giveawaycompletely. In the end, all that taxpayers really care about is that governments are spending their hard-earned money prudently, no matter whether it is funneled through some Liberal foundation or Manley's pork pot.

Unfortunately, the history of government infrastructure programs suggests there's nothing like mega-spending on mega-projects to create a mega-waste of taxpayers' money.

More on this Tuesday.

Greg Weston is Sun Media's national political columnist, his columns appear Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays.