Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Rod Gantefoer needs a Sir Humphrey Appleby

The Saskatchewan Municipal Finance Board is a provincial government agency which can lend money to municipal governments in order to support civic improvements such as infrastructure. As of today, not yet in the fourth quarter, the Board has exceeded it's budget by 100%.

Here is Finance Minister Rod Gantefoer answering questions in committee. Both Trent Wotherspoon and Pat Atkinson are opposition MLAs.

Trent Wotherspoon: So what's up with this 100% overrun?

Rod Gantefoer: Yeah, that's a problem. But it is all due to one big project that cost $40 million, if it wasn't for that everything would be fine.

Pat Atkinson: When did you find out about this 40 million?

Rod Gantefoer: I'm not sure. Let me check. [confers with officials] I'm informed at mid-year.

Pat Atkinson: After the money is spent?

Rod Gantefoer: I take the member's point. That's probably not a good thing.

Trent Wotherspoon: But who is actually on the board? Who approves spending the money?

Rod Gantefoer: I don't know who is on the board, let me ask. [confers with officials] I'm informed that the two members are the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Municipal Affairs.

Trent Wotherspoon: You probably should have known about all of this then, right? How will we know this won't happen again.

Rod Gantefoer: I'm taking notes tonight, we will have to look at some stuff.

Let me just repeat one line.

Rod Gantefoer: I don't know who is on the board, let me ask. [confers with officials] I'm informed that the two members are the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Municipal Affairs.

That's right. Saskatchewan Finance Minister Rod Gantefoer does not realize that he is one of two people on the Saskatchewan Municipal Finance Board. Neither does he remember what he has done as a member of that board.

It leaves me almost speechless. Thank goodness for YouTube.

First, Sir Humphrey Appleby shows how to deal with diffcult questions in committee.



And here's Chumbawumba with the song Amnesia, with it's chorus of "Do you suffer from long term memory loss? I don't remember."


3 comments:

Country Parson said...

I'm so disappointed. I thought Canadians had it all together.

Audrey II said...

Excellent post. I hope you won't mind me linking to it.

On a somewhat related note, you had asked about contact information a while ago. I thought I had posted it here, but I can't seem to find my reply. If you're still interested and need it, please let me know.

Malcolm+ said...

Audrey, you did send it to me via the comments section, but I didn't publish it. I expect to be emailing you soon.