The Small Matter of $50M in the Muskokas

On gazebos, road repairs, public bathrooms, and city beautification in cottage country.

The Conservative government might have misled the House of Commons over $50 million in spending on the G8 summit last year, Joan Bryden of the Canadian Press finds in a draft report from Auditor General Sheila Fraser. “It reveals that a local 'G8 summit liaison and implementation team' – Industry Minister Tony Clement; the mayor of Huntsville; and the general manager of Deerhurst Resort; which hosted the summit – chose the 32 projects that received funding. It says there was no apparent regard for the needs of the summit or the conditions laid down by the government,” Bryden writes.

The Toronto Star's Kenyon Wallace provides a breakdown of all 32 projects, including hundreds of thousands of dollars allocated to “city beautification” in a handful of towns dozens of kilometres away from the summit site.

John Ivison, writing in the National Post, judged that the report arrived “with devastating timing. The Grits have been saying for months that Mr. Clement’s Muskoka riding received millions of dollars of spending on roads and toilets that had nothing to do with the summit. Now, according to CP, Auditor General Sheila Fraser has reached the same conclusion.” And the fact that it's a widely respected civil servant delivering the blow only compounds the matter: “Third-party validations are materially different from routine partisan slings and arrows, and this revelation could wound the prime minister deeply.”

Meanwhile, Robert Silver at The Globe and Mail suggests the politicking over the report "is what we call all-in poker. If [the Conservatives'] version of events is accurate and the report exonerates entirely the Conservative government, there is zero chance that the report will not be leaked by the Harper camp today." On the other hand, "the final report [could be] bad news for [Stephen] Harper just like the draft report is. ... If that’s the case, then not only does Mr. Harper have the substance of the report to deal with but the subsequent spin that will make it so much worse for him." News that Fraser won't release the report without the House of Commons sitting will mean an awful lot of speculation over just what that report contains, and puts the onus on Harper, the Conservative leader, to explain at the debate just how the $50 million was spent.