Reality Check: The missing $3.1 billion - has unpleasant financial reporting stopped?

The Auditor General reported last week that the Conservatives can’t account for $3.1 billion in Public Security and Anti-Terrorism spending between 2001 and 2010.

That’s well known, but what’s happened since 2010? Both the Auditor General and the Assistant Auditor General had some interesting things to say about that:

“Our audit only went up in this time period and at the end of this time period this method of reporting was stopped”
– Michael Ferguson, Auditor General of Canada, Standing Committee on Public Accounts, May 2, 2013

“…the Treasury Board Secretariat has stopped collecting data from the departments in terms of the annual reports and are in the process of putting together another framework that they hope to have in place by, I think, some time in 2014”
– Wendy Loschiuk, Assistant Auditor General, Standing Committee on Public Accounts, May 2, 2013

So it seems that when the Auditor General found that the Conservatives weren’t counting money properly, the government’s answer was to simply stop counting.

Canadians deserve better accountability.