Liberals vote to block financial info

It happens now with such regularity that it hardly draws a mention in the press anymore.

But last week the Liberal majority on the legislature's public accounts committee once again blocked a legitimate request for information on how the government is spending Nova Scotians' money.

After hearing about the province's Covid-related expenditures from acting Auditor General Terry Spicer and deputy finance minister Byron Rafuse, opposition committee members wanted more details on the $230-million economic stimulus package the province announced way back in May.

For months the government ducked requests for those very details.

Dartmouth North New Democrat Susan Leblanc moved that the committee write to Premier Stephen Mcneil and the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure Renewal asking what the government got and bought with all that money.

But, as is their habit, the five Liberal backbenchers on the committee effectively blocked legislative oversight of government spending, by voting down Leblanc's motion.

At this point it should be noted that, in our parliamentary system, the government is accountable to the legislature for all of its spending but, outside of Liberal MLAS, most Nova Scotians already know that.

Another thing the five stonewalling Grits didn't know was that on the same day the committee met, the government would bow to pressure — or shame — and release lists of projects and places where the stimulus money went. Who got all the government contracts remains a secret.

It's too bad the Liberal committee members didn't know what was coming. Forewarning could have saved Liberal MLA Ben Jessome (Hammonds Plains-lucasville) an embarrassingly ill-informed intervention.

Speaking against Leblanc's motion, Jessome maintained that the details of the stimulus package would be released at some future date that he referred to as “budget season.”

He was proved wrong when the government produced its lists later in the day, but he was also wrong from the start.

The budget forecasts future spending. The stimulus money is already spent. Another dozen “budget seasons” could come and go without any accounting to the legislature for the stimulus package.

Meanwhile, even as the government released the barest of details, Premier Mcneil was whining about how hard it is for his government to do the right thing.

"It was my hope, quite frankly, that I could keep (bureaucrats) focused on delivering the services that Nova Scotians have expected in the last nine months," the premier said.

"Unfortunately, those Nova Scotians that are responding to the citizens of this province and working on their behalf everyday had to do your work as well,” Mcneil told reporters.

The premier had maintained that by matching up various government data sets, reporters should be able to divine how his government spent the money, and if that didn't work they could always try a Ouija Board.

Mcneil's assertion that government employees have to stop delivering services in order to account for where the money is spent is patently absurd and totally disingenuous.

Had the premier tuned in to the public accounts committee, he would have heard the deputy finance minister assure the committee that, between the finance department and financial officials in other departments, the government knows where every penny goes.

Rafuse left little doubt that finance officials could cough up the information in question without breaking a sweat, which suggests it could surely be done without hauling people away from program or service delivery.

When a government is determined to keep folks in the dark about where it's spending their money, it's usually for one of two reasons. That government is either shoddy or shady.

A government that can't tell you where it spent a quarter of a billion dollars is running a pretty shoddy operation. One that doesn't want people to know where their money went is obviously shady.

There may be a third option peculiar to this government. Mcneil is famously stubborn and once he said the information was available, he was going to stick to his story no matter what.