Billions unaccounted for during Catherine McKenna’s Audit

Minister of Infrastructure, Catherine McKenna, is suddenly finding the spotlight. It all began with a breach that was found in the treasury board contracting policy during a federal audit in August 2020.

Following this, in October 2020, another internal audit was conducted. This time the Minister of Infrastructure and Communities was found to have a plethora of malpractices. This was a role that Mkenna had taken up in November of 2019.

This time Auditor General, Karen Hogan discovered multiple inconsistencies and information that was simply not complete. This is troubling as this was to be a 12 year investment worth $187.8 billion.

The original report had many concerning errors and for some reason seemed to lack certain budget information. The list references items such as only a partial list of projects being produced, the Infrastructure Canada online project list had not been updated since 2020 and yet had 33,000 entries and there were differences between the summary of spending and projects lists.

Hogan stated, “Infrastructure Canada’s reporting captured only some programs each year making it impossible to compare results year over year … The absence of clear and complete reporting on the Investing In Canada Plan makes it difficult for Parliamentarians and Canadians to know whether progress is being made against the intended objectives”

Apparently when Pierre Poilievre Questioned how much was missing, Director-General of Costing at the budget office, Jason Jacques, had given the estimate of “about half of the program.”

Half of the program equals around $93 billion dollars. How do you even begin to explain losing that much?