Wednesday, January 09, 2013

Auditor General Firing Fiasco (ctd.)...More On The Foster Factor.

SometimesAWurlitzering
IsSelf-InflictedVille

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Update: At the bottom of the post...

Double Secret Probation 'Twisting In The Wind' Update....Here
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Earlier today we noted that the chairperson of the Legislative committee that apparently fired Auditor General John Doyle, BC Christy Party MLA Eric Foster, may have been in a conflict of interest when he helped rule on the matter recently.

It all comes down to a previous investigation by AG Doyle that specifically referred to renovations Mr. Foster had done on his constituency office, an office that is located in a building that is owned by the family of Mr. Foster's constiuency assistant.

And, guess what....

It appears that the good Mr. Foster wants to make the story even more newsworthy, at least according to a Tweet late yesterday from Paul Willcocks:



And then there's this, from Sean Leslie, of CKNW:

...Eric Foster says he didn't know Auditor-General John Doyle had concerns about the 78-thousand dollar renovation until this week.

Foster defends the expense and says Doyle's concerns have since been resolved - he won't release documents to back that up saying that would break the law, and he wants to know who leaked the Auditor's letter to the media in the first place.

"This is priveleged, this is a management document that's inside lamc, and that's priveleged information, it's not to be published. Whoever leaked that document to the times-colonist is breaking the law."...



That's right Mr. Foster.

Hide everything!

(while claiming complete and total innocence b/w Mr. Fraser's super-secret-sauce cone-of silence blessing with a cherry on top)



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Update: Ian Reid has more on the 'legal' issue at hand, both in the comments and over at his place....

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6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Looks like Mr. Foster is into the whine. (no pun intended)

Burgess

Ian said...

Mr. Foster is not telling the truth. It's not against the law for him to disclose the remedy he made.

Here's the relevant section of what I believe is the only law applicable: The Auditor General Act

Confidentiality
9 The Auditor General, or a person appointed or engaged under section 8 [Staff of the Auditor General], must keep in confidence all information obtained in the exercise of a power or in the performance of a duty of the Auditor General and must not communicate this information to any person except
(a) in the course of the administration of an enactment, or
(b) in court proceedings.

There is nothing preventing the MLA or the Speaker from providing the information except parliamentary convention - and that can change at any time.

Mr. Foster is either too ignorant or too disingenuous to be an MLA.

North Van's Grumps said...

"...Eric Foster says he didn't know Auditor-General John Doyle had concerns about the 78-thousand dollar renovation until this week."

Let's see it's Wednesday the 9th, Tuesday was the 8th, Monday was the 7th, Sunday was the 6th.

Sunday, two days after the normal-Friday-take-out-the-garbage-press-reports, the public is informed that MLA Foster, as Chair, fired the AG, or rather, the Committee couldn't reach a Unanimous decision amongst the five MLAs to retain the AG.

Result, the majority wants to hire someone new, someone .... Conservative Blue.

As to the screwball voting system: Three BC Liberals, Two NDPs..... for the appointment of a Non-Partisan kind of guy who is there to represent the InterestS of the Public, it would be expected an equal number of voters, to ensure that the Public's right to be fairly represented by an AG, is done so, without Malice Aforethought.

Hmmmmm Was there one MLA amongst the Five, that was angry enough on Sunday, that it swayed him from voting in a prudent manner?

Don F. said...

someone broke the law mr. Foster, someone sure did.It is not whoever broke or leaked this to the times columnist but the one stealing the publics money as in mine!Sleep well this can all be tidied up tommorrow.
Oh by the way, what is that nasty dicrepency betwee $78,000 and $67,000, what is that nuisance?

RossK said...

Now it might just be total incompetence, but...

I've gotta wonder...

Why is the Braintrust that is supposed to be running the show over there at Snook & Co letting Mr. Foster re-crank the Wurlitzer like this.

Could at be that the good Mr. Foster has been thrown under the bus by the finest of the fine lurking deep within the amygdala of S&Co?

But...

Why would the Braintrust do something like that, you might be asking.

Well....

Did you see Ms. Clark's name mentioned anywhere in any of the stories or commentaries related to this matter today?

So...

No matter how it actually went down deflector spin is just that, no?

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Anonymous said...

Anybody in Vernon with a camera willing to do some informational photography?

I'd like to see what $70,000.00 in renovations looks like. Foster's MLA page -- http://www.leg.bc.ca/mla/39thParl/fosterE.htm -- shows the constituency office address as 3209 31st Avenue, Vernon, BC.

If you look on Google's street view you can see the building - $70,000 would pay for a rebuild of that office twice over... this really stinks.

Anybody know the building owner's name? There seems to be more to this story if Foster paid $70k for this crap shack.