The opposition NDP is calling for a probe of G8 Legacy Fund spending after it obtained documents showing the $50 million fund was run out of cabinet minister Tony Clement’s riding office and bypassed government scrutiny.

“Information supplied to us by local municipalities is helping piece together a picture of an elaborate slush fund that managed to avoid all the normal checks and balances,” NDP MP Charlie Angus told reporters. “In fact, it appears that this slush fund was set up in such a way that it kept both the Canadian public and the auditor general in the dark.”

Angus said the issue should be probed by a Parliamentary committee and called on Clement, now Treasury Board president, to make public all documents concerning the G8 Legacy Fund.

Angus and fellow NDP MP Hoang Mai are also calling on Prime Minister Stephen Harper to explain why the legacy fund didn’t follow normal accountability rules and outline what steps he plans to take to make sure other ministers follow the rules.

Heather Hume, spokeswoman for Clement, said he was vacationing out of the country with his family and could not be reached for comment. Hume dismissed the NDP’s allegations, saying the matter has been fully investigated already by the auditor general’s office and Canadians know what they got for their money.

Liberal MP John McCallum fired off a letter to Interim Auditor General John Wiersema calling on his office to a full value for money audit in light of the revelations.

However, Ghislain Desjardins, media relations manager for the Auditor General’s office, said the AG’s office has no plan at this time to reopen its investigation.

“The Office of the Auditor General has the authority to request documentation for funding of federal public money. We asked for documentation, but we were not provided with any. Deputy ministers signed off on the accuracy of facts in the chapter. We have no plans to reopen the file.”

The NDP’s revelation comes two months after the auditor general’s office tabled a report that was sharply critical of the way the Harper government handled spending for last year’s G8 and G20 summit meetings.

The report was particularly critical when it came to the $50 million G8 Infrastructure Legacy Fund which paid for everything from gazebos and public washrooms to beautification projects around Clement’s Muskoka-area riding.

“It is very unusual and troubling,” Wiersema told reporters. “There is no paper trail behind the selection of the 32 projects.”

“In my career in auditing I have never encountered a situation like that where there is absolutely no paper trail.”

The report, prepared and signed by former Auditor General Sheila Fraser, concluded that Parliament was led to believe it was approving money for infrastructure projects to reduce congestion at the Canada-U.S border. Members of Parliament weren’t told that hidden within that $83 million envelope was $50 million for the G8 Legacy Infrastructure Fund.

Fraser’s office couldn’t find a paper trail in federal government offices, but the NDP was able to find one by using the Ontario freedom of information act to obtain documents from two municipalities that benefited from the G8 Legacy Fund – Gravenhurst and Bracebridge.

Angus said the documents reveal that Clement’s riding office was running its own parallel operation, making up its own form for funding applications and reviewing which projects should be funded.

“What the auditor general didn’t know is that Minister Clement had established a private, parallel process that left no bureaucratic paper trail.

“Months before the legacy funding had even been announced, Clement set up a secret committee, the local area leadership group, to identify how money would be spent.”

Angus said Clement personally chaired these meetings and the committee of mayors rubber stamped the projects. Clement largely bypassed the federal bureaucracy by running the program out of his riding office, Angus added. However, he said the documents also reveal that senior bureaucrats from the department of foreign affairs, FEDNOR, Industry Canada and Infrastructure Canada were involved in the process, sat in on meetings, and helped write the funding criteria based on input from the mayors.

“So why did senior officials deny involvement when pressed by the auditor general?” asked Clement.

If everything was above board, why didn’t Clement provide details of how the funding process worked and the form his office used, Angus questioned. “It is completely unacceptable to use a constituency office, to use a homemade form, to set up a private process…to spend taxpayers money.”

Hoang Mai described the revelations in the documents as “the tip of the iceberg” and challenged Conservative cabinet minister John Baird’s assertion in the past that the government had to move quickly to flow funding to projects in time for the G8 Summit.

“It appears obvious reading these documents that this is not the case of a process set up to spend money more rapidly. It was rather a case of circumventing the normal public sector accountability mechanisms.”

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Here are the documents obtained by the NDP. Let us know if you see something we should follow up on.

Bracebridge

Gravenhurst