Another former MLA is implicated?

As many of you may recall, several months ago Nova Scotia's Auditor General uncovered a series of "inappropriate" expenditures made by the province's MLAs. At the time of this first announcement it was suggested that while some of the expenses did break some of the rules the abuses were not of a criminal nature. A February 3, 2010 CBC web story points out the that the Auditor General "said he found no evidence of criminal wrongdoing." For the next couple of weeks this was the line on the story: excessive, but legal expenditures.

Shortly after the story broke it was announced that the Auditor General would be conducting a 'forensic audit' on MLA expenditures. On February 12, 2010 CBC reported that the Auditor General was "doing this because he has received new information from the public, the media and from his own fact finding over the past number of days." This means that within less than two weeks of the publication of his initial report the Auditor General began to question the quality of his own findings. Strangely (or not surprisingly), even in light of this acknowledgement of the insufficiency of the findings, Dexter continued to insist that a more in-depth investigation was not required.

In March, after the sudden resignations of Richard Hurlburt and Dave Wilson, the NDP suspended Trevor Zinck from its caucus. Interestingly, at the time CBC quoted Zinck as saying "This has got nothing to do - and I want to be clear on this - with the auditor general's report. I did fall behind in paying some bills … but everything has been put back in check. I've reassured the Speaker's Office as of this week I have a full-time assistant in place as of Jan. 25 and it's business as usual for this community." If Zinck is correct, and this has nothing to do with the Auditor General's report does it not suggest that there may be significant problems that have not even been investigated by the Auditor General? Does this development not also further call into question the utility and comprehensiveness of the original report?

In mid-May the Auditor General referred the cases of 1 current and 4 former MLAs to the RCMP for further investigation, suggesting that he things that there may have been criminal wrong-doing in these cases. These developments lead me to a number of questions about the original report. Firstly, how comprehensive was the original report if within a few months the findings of the original report are called into question by subsequent investigations? Secondly, to what extent have these developments undermined public trust in the Office of the Auditor General? If in February we are told that there do not appear to be signs of criminal wrong-doing only to find out in May that 5 cases have been referred to the police how do we know that we can trust any of the other findings that come from this office.

Of course, any confidence the public still has in the office might be further shaken by the fact that yet another former MLA has been referred to the RCMP for investigation, though this time because the Speaker's office uncovered problems with expense claims. Because they are a former MLA it seems likely that the problems were found with old rather than new expense claims, claims that I would have assumed had been examined by the Auditor General. How is it possible that after two audits new problems are being uncovered? How can the government maintain, with a straight face, that the investigations that have taken place thus far are sufficient even when further problems have been uncovered after each investigation?