Harper will end lucrative polling contracts to government insiders

January 3, 2006

Conservative government will take aim at “money for nothing” contracts

QUEBEC CITY – Conservative Leader Stephen Harper today unveiled his plans to clean up public opinion research contracting – a key plank of the Federal Accountability Act.

“Canadians work hard for their money, and when they send their tax dollars to Ottawa, they have a right to expect value for money,” Harper said. “This means work that is fully accessible and fully auditable."

Under the Liberal government, contracts have frequently gone to political insiders. Taxpayers do not get value for money because of the existence of “verbal reports,” contracts for which there is no paper trail for work performed.

The Liberals’ fondness for verbal reports has been criticized by the Auditor General. In the same report that uncovered the sponsorship scandal, the Auditor General criticized public opinion research contracting as having similar problems. In particular, Chapter 5 of that report criticized the use of government polls for political purposes as well as the prevalence of verbal reports. The Auditor General singled out the Department of Finance, which under Paul Martin relied heavily on verbal reports in contracts with Martin’s friends at Earnscliffe.[1] She found that five out of eight contracts between Paul Martin’s Department of Finance and Earnscliffe between 1999 and 2002 had only verbal reports.[2] Based on publicly available data, the value of these contracts was somewhere between $75,000 and $750,000 (see backgrounder).

This practice has continued under the Martin government. In February 2005, the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs hired a consultant for $132,000 and specified in the contract that “presentations shall be oral with supporting material provided to aid comprehension but not retained by the department.”[3]

A new Conservative government will ensure value for money by banning verbal reports. In addition, it will further investigate the Auditor General’s disturbing revelations of public opinion research practices.

A Conservative government will:

“When the Auditor General cried foul over questionable polling contracts, Paul Martin turned a blind eye,” Harper said. “We are going to get the bottom of these ‘money for nothing and your cheques for free’ contracts and finish the work that Sheila Fraser started.”

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