{"id":2955,"date":"2011-04-11T14:45:00","date_gmt":"2011-04-11T18:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=2955"},"modified":"2012-05-29T17:30:32","modified_gmt":"2012-05-29T21:30:32","slug":"october-surprise-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=2955","title":{"rendered":"October Surprise"},"content":{"rendered":"

Outside of the NHL’s playoff schedule, we haven’t had many outside events impact this election. Until today: <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Tories misled Parliament on G8 spending: Auditor-General<\/span><\/a><\/strong> <\/p>\n

The Harper government misinformed Parliament to win approval for a $50-million G8 fund that lavished money on dubious projects in a Conservative riding, the Auditor-General has concluded. <\/p>\n

And she suggests the process by which the funding was approved may have been illegal. <\/p>\n

The findings are contained in a confidential report Sheila Fraser was to have tabled in Parliament on April 5. The report analyzed the $1-billion cost of staging last June’s G8 summit in Ontario cottage country and a subsequent gathering of G20 leaders in downtown Toronto. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

Even though all four parties have called for the final report to be made public, as per procedure, it cannot be released<\/a> until Parliament resumes post-election. <\/p>\n

John Baird assures us that the second draft he’s seen is glowing in its praise of the Harper government. That must have been one heck of a re-write – my guess is Baird is either full of it, or he read the draft after Bev Oda had been through with it. After all, if there’s a draft out there that praises the government, I can’t for the life of me imagine it not <\/em>getting leaked. <\/p>\n

As for what it means to the campaign, it’s hard to say. It certainly gives Ignatieff ammo heading into the debates, and gives him an entry-point to revive the G20 waste issues. Whenever Harper talks about being a prudent fiscal manager, all Ignatieff has to do is point to million dollar fake lakes and gazebos. <\/p>\n

Beyond that, I’m skeptical this is a game-changer. After all, we already knew the G20 was a boondoggle and this hole election was triggered because the Tories misled Parliament. This isn’t new. Still, a scandal about wasting taxpayer dollars is a lot more relevant to voters than who or what Bruce Carson may have been doing after leaving Harper’s inner circle. <\/p>\n

Stay tuned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Outside of the NHL’s playoff schedule, we haven’t had many outside events impact this election. Until today: Tories misled Parliament on G8 spending: Auditor-General The Harper government misinformed Parliament to win approval for a $50-million G8 fund that lavished money on dubious projects in a Conservative riding, the Auditor-General has concluded. And she suggests the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1019,983,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2011-federal-election","category-federal-politics","category-scandals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2955"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2955\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3629,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2955\/revisions\/3629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}