OTTAWA — The auditor general plans to table a report in Parliament early next month on the controversial $1.24-billion federal expenditure on last summer’s G8 and G20 summits, plans that could be upset in the event of an election.

If the March 22 budget is defeated, the election call would at least delay the release of the potentially critical report until after the election since the federal spending watchdog reports to Parliament and can’t table a report when the House isn’t sitting.

The Commons Public Accounts committee, which will be responsible for scrutinizing the report after it is presented to Parliament, was informed last week of Auditor General Sheila Fraser’s plan to table it on April 5.

The chapter of the report dealing with summit expenditures “examines whether the amounts spent were used for the intended purposes — for security, policing, organizing, and hosting of the summits,” the auditor general says in a notice on its webpage.

However, the audit “did not examine the effectiveness of the summits or the appropriateness of the level of security or hosting provided,” it adds. “Nor did it question the merit of goods and services identified by summit planners as requirements.”

The Opposition parties, which were highly critical of the money the government spent to host the two summits last June — the G8 in Huntsville, north of Toronto, and the G20 immediately after in Toronto itself — would pounce on the auditor general’s report, if it too is critical, as reports from the auditor general often are.

And if critical, the report could also hurt the government’s election campaign fundraising efforts, especially among fiscal conservatives.

The summit expenditures, for example, won the Canadian Taxpayers Federation’s annual award for the most outrageous example of wasteful federal spending on what it called a “political chin-wag, ironically organized to discuss how to trim government over-spending.”

The Opposition parties, meanwhile, were especially critical of the $23 million spent on an international media centre, which included $57,000 spent to create an artificial lake, saying the expenditures were a waste of taxpayers’ money.

The $858 million in security costs were also widely criticized, as was police handling of the anti-summit protests in downtown Toronto.

The report will also contain a chapter reviewing the G8 Legacy Infrastructure Fund, which provided $50 million to the host region for the June 2010 G8 Summit to help prepare for the summit, enhance local infrastructure, and showcase the natural beauty of the area for foreign dignitaries and media.

That chapter looks at how the fund was established, how it was funded, and how projects were selected, but again not if it was effective.

A third chapter in the report looks at the approach used by the Department of National Defence to plan and implement a pension plan for members of the Reserve Force, again a potentially critical report with concerns having been expressed about whether the government does enough for veterans, including an increased number in Afghanistan who were members of the military reserves.