Reason to worry

Could one ask for a more ominous set of signs about the ultimate results of than what's surfaced over the past couple of days? First, there's Deficit Jim setting the stage for waste and mismanagement:

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty acknowledged that Ottawa will foul up as it rushes to dole out $40-billion of stimulus spending, but said the potential for gaffes is acceptable because aid must be expedited to counter the economic downturn.

"There will be some mistakes made. But it's worth that risk to help the majority of Canadians during what is a serious recession," he said yesterday following a weekly meeting of Conservative MPs...

Mr. Flaherty didn't specify what kinds of boondoggles might occur as Ottawa signs cheques for an extraordinarily large amount of money over 24 months, including close to $20-billion in construction and infrastructure spending.

He said Ottawa is sidestepping traditional approval routes to speed up stimulus dollars and will provide Canadians a timetable for implementation on March 11. "This is urgent. This is an emergency situation of getting this stimulus into the Canadian economy to benefit Canadians, to benefit people who are going to lose their jobs."

For instance, he said, Treasury Board - the government's cash manager - is modifying how it handles spending, and the Tories are taking some plans directly to cabinet instead of the normal route for vetting ideas.

But making matters worse, there's the latest from Information Commissioner Robert Marleau - whose grim repord card on access to information includes Public Works as one of the departments which received an "F", joining the PCO which has always been one of the worse offenders.

This comes just two years after Public Works received a "B" the last time Marleau used the report card system. And it's also a report on a year where Public Works was doing next to nothing in terms of approving actual projects - rather than one where its staff will be in a rush to push projects out the door.

So to sum up...

We have no way of knowing who will be making decisions about billions of dollars worth of spending. And indeed those responsible aren't saying anything more than that they're making it up on the fly.

But we do know that the likeliest suspects are two departments which the Cons have ensured won't respond to access to information requests. So it may take years to even figure out who was responsible for any decisions, let alone what factors were taken into consideration.

This will not end well.