A senior civil servant spends $300,000 on travel and hotel expenses in a year and a half.
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General reaction in the federal government and among the Liberals: “Yes, so what?”
Everyone is washing their hands, first and foremost the minister responsible for the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC), Jonathan Wilkinson.
Who will be surprised?
The Trudeau government has never spared money. Budgetary rigor is not part of his vocabulary.
He does not hesitate to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to celebrate the monarchy in London, or to plunge the country into structural deficits as far as the eye can see.
Excuse
The Minister of Natural Resources believes he has a good excuse to look the other way. You see, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, which Rumina Velshi headed for five years, is a Crown corporation independent of the federal government!
How would commenting on the expenses of its ex-president harm the proper functioning of this state corporation?
The government has no desire to know why Mme Velshi spent $288,000 on plane tickets and hotels in 19 months?
How could she happily charge $1,000 for nights, $13,000 for plane tickets, $1,500 for Toronto-Ottawa flights or $3,500 to Vancouver?
That Mme Velshi taking advantage of his status to see the world in business class and in the most beautiful hotels does not seem to interest the Trudeau government.
He leaves it up to this state-owned company, financed 100% by taxpayers, to manage its finances itself.
Preferential treatment
Mr. Wilkinson maintains that the CNSC “is an independent regulator and is responsible for the management and oversight of its own financial authorities,” period.
However, the federal government does not hesitate to cut funding from certain departments or state corporations, or even from Parliament’s watchdogs like the Auditor General if it wishes.
Why this preferential treatment for the Crown corporation responsible for nuclear safety in the country?
Is Canada such a nuclear powerhouse on the world stage that the president of an obscure federal agency has no spending limits on her trips abroad?
A federal agency which, moreover, has the main mandate of regulating the use of nuclear power in Canada, which has 4 power plants, including 3 in Ontario.
The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission refuses to justify so much travel spending, while the Trudeau government watches and whistles.
Apparently, in the case of Rumina Velshi’s expenses, all the rules were followed.
What if it was the rules that were the problem?