Rick Peterson BC Conservative Leadership Campaign FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: March 27, 2014 rickpeterson.net Vancouver, BC Peterson Calls For Roving Forensic Auditor To Protect Taxpayers (Vancouver) BC Conservative Leadership candidate Rick Peterson today called on the provincial government to appoint an independent “Roving Forensic Auditor” to look into potential misuse of taxpayer funds. “When you look at the flagrant and outrageous abuse of taxpayer money in the Portland Hotel Society affair, and then you see the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly spending $700 on muffin racks and thousands more of public funds on flights for her husband to play with giraffes in South Africa, you have to wonder how much more of this is going on that we have no clue about,” said Peterson, a Vancouver businessman. “Linda Reid of the BC Liberals and the BC NDP’s Jenny Kwan and Raj Chouhan have all been caught with their hands in the cookie jar over the past two weeks. BC taxpayers deserve and expect better than that. It’s time we put some teeth into an independent group that will be charged with defending the public purse.” Peterson pointed out that most provincial government audits are simply financial audits, which merely show if the financial statements produced by an entity actually reflect the financial position. Only rarely does the government perform forensic audits, which are usually done by outside accounting professionals. Forensic audits entail a higher level of investigation than financial audits and are used to uncover fraud or misuse of funds for personal gain. Financial audits of the Portland Hotel Society showed irregularities as far back as 2002, but it wasn’t until 2010, when PHS went into deficit, that BC Housing Minister Rich Coleman finally reacted, calling for two more financial reviews and another financial audit. Finally, in 2012, Minister Coleman called in outside help and asked KPMG to perform a forensic audit. From 2010 through to 2014, while these reviews were underway, records show that PHS spending of taxpayer money on luxury travel in Europe, fine dining, spas, hair salons and gifts continued unabated. “This is totally unacceptable and has to stop,” said Peterson. “We need to have an audit ‘SWAT-team’ that can initiate random and thorough forensic audits so that things are stopped in their tracks before they get out of hand. Why are we only finding out today, in 2014, about Portland Hotel Society ‘s inappropriate spending that took place in 2010?” Peterson pointed out that BC’s Comptroller-General should be performing this forensic auditing function, but it only does so when asked by a Ministry, and that doesn’t happen often enough. He pointed to the three-month probe into the Vancouver School Board done in 2010 by Comptroller-General Cheryl Wenesenki-Yolland and nine colleagues that uncovered financial mismanagement and missed revenue opportunities by VSB trustees. That report was requested by the Ministry of Education, and is the type of quick, thorough and quality report Peterson says could be completed by a roving forensic audit team. The Auditor-General of BC as well could perform some of these duties, said Peterson, but seemingly missed the abuses inside Portland Hotel Society or wasn’t aware of issues there. Peterson wrote to the Auditor General in November requesting it look into the BC Liberal government’s inability to account for more than $60 million in spending on Aboriginal Children and Youth Services. The Auditor-General’s website currently features reports on earthquake preparedness and cash flow management at colleges and school districts. “Premier Christy Clark made lots of noise a year and a half ago about how municipal governments needed to be more accountable for every penny of their spending,” Peterson concluded. “That resulted in the creation of the office of the ‘Municipal Auditor General’. Today, I’m calling on her to be consistent, and to apply the same kinds of rigorous standards of oversight to issues involving spending by her own government - particularly in the area of government service delivery. School Districts, Health Authorities and other crown agencies should be subject to forensic auditing to protect the interests of taxpayers.” The BC Conservatives elect a new Leader on April 12th.
Posted on: Thu, 27 Mar 2014 19:19:11 +0000
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