The public’s trust in institutions like government and the media has been eroding.

In an effort to maintain transparency and integrity in the political process, almost all Western democracies have adopted the role of an auditor general to provide accountability and value for money assessments.

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The idea was that more independent information for the public will empower them in the political process of elections and choosing a government. The role of auditor general is also supposed to serve to help prevent government from making mistakes and wasting money.

However, the role of the auditor general today has increasingly become one that embarrasses government and serves to point a finger of blame rather than show a new direction for the better. This new role is actually further eroding trust in government and making matters worse.

We saw this trend alive and well last week in Ontario as provincial Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk released her annual report and held a media availability on Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne’s Liberal government.

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Lysyk identified some areas that the government must act and provided some useful information for the pubic. But in some specific areas, she pushed the boundaries of what is an independent audit versus what should be kept in the political arena.

This continues a trend in Ontario that former ombudsman Andre Marin started when he took his role as an independent officer of the legislature and made it political. Marin was accused of crossing the boundary from independent officer of the legislature into partisan politics. When he eventually ran as a Progressive Conservative against the Liberal government he criticized, Marin lost.

Lysyk has pushed some limits in the key areas of budgeting, the contents of her report and with her handling of Freedom of Information Requests.

Example one: For the first time in 16 years, Lysyk in 2016 decided to change her office’s opinion on how the Ontario government presents pension assets in the audited financial statements and fought the government’s claim it had balanced the budget in 2017-18.

Wynne’s Liberals asked an independent expert panel to determine the appropriate accounting treatment of the pension assets and they sided with the government. Lysyk provided her advice to the government and that should have been the end of it.

Instead, in her latest annual report she rehashed the same issue and has gone from proving independent oversight to being an advocate for her own position.

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The second example is how the government replies to her recommendations. The auditor general has been known to edit out government responses from her report when she believes they do not reflect her perspective. According to the Liberals, they submitted comprehensive replies to her recommendations and issues.

Her role is not to embarrass the government but, rather, to provide information so politicians can either be held accountable or, better yet, fix the problems she addresses. The auditor general’s priority should be on preventing waste. Comprehensive replies from the government give context to the problems identified by the auditor general.

Finally, media reports talk of how Lysyk rejected Freedom of Information requests made by the media for the evidence she uses in putting together her reports. A member of the media placed a request for her correspondence with non-partisan bureaucrats. Lysyk rejected this request to release the correspondence and instead wanted to know who had requested it.

The role of auditor general should be to provide more transparency, not prevent information from flowing to the media.

In her actions on these specific issues, Lysyk undermines the trust and credibly the public would otherwise have in her on other issues, and undermines trust in government as an institution.

It is more important than ever that we have strong independent oversight – and Lysyk has done a good job on some of the issues she addressed last week.

But in 2018, and in the run up to the election, it will be important that the auditor’s role be one to inform the public rather than influence them.

Jim Warren is a Liberal strategist who has worked for Toronto mayor Mel Lastman and Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty.