High praise indeed

The spin is in on Sheila Fraser's first report on stimulus spending. So now that we're all agreed that she had absolutely nothing but compliments for Canada's New Government that's Getting Things Done, let's see what Fraser actually had to say:

Program officials relied on the information provided in project applications as confirmation that projects were construction ready. We found that, despite the information provided in the application, many of these infrastructure projects did not proceed on the start date stated in the application. There were a number of reasons for the delays, including that projects were not, in fact, construction ready, or that departmental approval was provided after the start date proposed by the applicant.
...
Infrastructure Canada informed us that 93 percent of the project proposals it reviewed for the Infrastructure Stimulus Fund were excluded from environmental assessment. The Department relied on information provided by other levels of government and organizations in their application forms and performed minimal additional verification to determine whether a project could be excluded from an environmental assessment or not. The Infrastructure Stimulus Fund application form collected information on federal environmentally sensitive land for projects; however, information on provincial, regional, and local environmentally sensitive areas was only collected for buildings and not other types of projects. Infrastructure Canada relied on the provincial, regional, and municipal governments in order that projects submitted for funding consideration adhered to the relevant laws and management plans for the various provincial, regional, and local environmentally sensitive areas. As a result, the design of the application form was critical to gathering correct and complete information about a project and its surroundings, including environmentally sensitive areas.

During our testing of a sample of 52 approved projects, we found that all projects were excluded from environmental assessment under the new Regulations, but 35 of these 52 projects lacked sufficient information to make the determination about whether an exclusion was warranted. These gaps were due to weaknesses in the design of the Infrastructure Stimulus Fund application form.
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In their reports to the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, we found that, for the infrastructure programs we audited, departments used different units of measure and methodologies to estimate the number of jobs created or maintained from the stimulus funding they delivered. For example, some departments described the type of professions employed through Economic Action Plan programs, such as construction trades and manufacturing. Others reported on the number of jobs created and maintained for construction and renovation projects but provided no indication on how the estimates were calculated. In one department, the number of hours worked were calculated and reported. Taken together, estimates of Economic Action Plan-related jobs created or maintained provided by departments to the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat were not consistent among programs.
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We found that the Department of Finance Canada relied on model-based macroeconomic analysis to measure and report on the Economic Action Plan’s impact on jobs and the Canadian economy, because project-level job information was unreliable and did not provide a complete picture of jobs created or maintained. Due to the significance of the Economic Action Plan, it is important that departmental performance reports include specific analysis of their individual programs and how these programs contributed to the Economic Action Plan objectives.

That's right: your Harper Cons, belatedly approving projects without dealing with environmental issues, then making up job numbers for lack of any accurate information. What more could one ask for in a government?