I have a bright shiny loonie in my pocket that I promise to give to whoever can point me to an example of any government anywhere in Canada that wins a showdown with their auditor general. I start from the assumption that, if you are a prime minister or a premier and the auditor general says your government is screwing up, it’s likely best to quietly agree, say you’ll fix the problem and move on, even if you don’t agree, rather than pick a fight with your auditor general. The reasoning here is that voters tend to believe auditors general and they tend not to believe politicians. I fully recognized that there is a great variety in abilities of auditors general across the country and a great variety in politicians but, when these two worlds collide, it matters not and so, I give you this First General Rule of Politics: Auditors General Are Always Right.
And yet, in British Columbia, the B.C. Liberal government of Christy Clark, likely in its final weeks in any event, has decided to essentially declare that B.C. Auditor General John Doyle is incompetent, doesn’t know what he’s doing, and got it all wrong when he concluded that the B.C. government approach to making itself ‘carbon neutral” is not only a monumental waste of taxpayer money it is failing to reach any of the policy objectives that money was supposed to buy. Continue reading Pick a fight with the auditor general? Great idea, Premier Clark! A real vote-winner!
