Auditor general declines MPs’ request for second audit of ‘green slush fund’

OTTAWA — Auditor General Karen Hogan has declined a House of Commons committee’s request for a second, deeper audit of the so-called “green slush fund,” arguing that it likely wouldn’t dig up anything new.

In a letter to the public accounts committee dated Oct. 21, Hogan confirmed to members that her office would not be undertaking the “value for money and performance audit” of Sustainable Development Technology (SDTC) requested by the committee last month.

That’s because she says the report she tabled in June on the foundation — rebranded as the “green slush fund” by Conservatives — was essentially what MPs were asking for.

That scathing report found “significant lapses” in SDTC’s governance and handling of public funds. For example, Hogan discovered 90 decisions in which the fund had violated its own conflict-of-interest policies.

The report also discovered that 10 of the 58 SDTC-funded projects that she audited were ineligible and yet had still received a total of $59 million.

But in September, PACP members approved a Conservative motion calling on Hogan to conduct another “value for money and performance” audit of all projects funded by SDTC since Jan. 1, 2017, as opposed to a sample as she did in her first audit.

“We know that where there’s smoke, there’s fire, and there’s probably a lot more going on here than the 226 projects the Auditor General looked at out of the billion-dollar Liberal green slush fund,” Conservative MP Rick Perkins said at the time.

But in her October letter, Hogan said that’s unlikely.

She said that during the audit, her office looked at “all projects” related to allegations that were brought to her attention as well as every funding decision record by the board of directors during the audit period.

The audit team also used “representative sampling” when choosing which projects to assess that led to results with a confidence level of “no less than” 90 per cent and a margin of error of no more than 10 per cent.

“Given this approach to our audit work, it is highly unlikely that our main findings conclusion, and recommendations would be different if we were to look at additional projects,” Hogan wrote.

“We did a very thorough audit,” Hogan told MPs during a testimony to committee on Monday.

In her letter, Hogan also said that a second audit would be “duplicative” considering an ongoing review of funded projects by the newly appointed SDTC board of directors.

The same day Hogan’s June audit was published, Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne announced he was shutting down the embattled fund and folding its responsibilities into the National Research Council within one year.

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