Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire

BELOW IS FROM THE CBC.....

Auditor General Sheila Fraser has written a scathing letter rebuking the Conservatives for misquoting her in a parliamentary report on the costs of the G8/G20 summits in Toronto last summer, CBC News has learned.

The Conservatives' report, presented as a dissenting opinion to the Commons the morning Parliament was dissolved last month, quotes Fraser giving high marks to the Harper government for prudent spending on the summits.

The report quoted the auditor general as saying: "We found that the processes and controls around that were very good, and that the monies were spent as they were intended to be spent."
But in her letter addressed to members of a Commons committee on Friday, which was received by the clerk and members on Monday, Fraser said the quote had nothing to do with the summits.
Instead, she said, the Conservatives recycled an old comment she made on security spending by a previous Liberal government after the 9/11 terrorist attacks a decade ago.

"The comments attributed to me in the [Conservative] report are completely unrelated to G8/G20 spending," Fraser writes in her letter.
"I would appreciate it if the report could be modified as it is clearly erroneous."
New Democrat MP Pat Martin called the Conservatives' attempt to put words in Fraser's mouth "probably the sleaziest thing I have seen in politics."

"It just shows such a profound disrespect for the auditor general," Martin said.
Fraser's letter is addressed to the chairman of the now-defunct Commons operations and estimates committee, Liberal MP John McKay, and copied to several other members, including Martin.
When the government was defeated last month, the committee had just finished studying the more than $1.2 billion the Harper government spent on the three-day summits held in Toronto and in Muskoka cottage country to the north of the city.

But the Conservatives on the committee issued their own two-page report.
In it, they claimed: "All witnesses brought forward testimony demonstrating strong endorsement of the government's unprecedented transparency to summit costs."
The misquote from Fraser was intended to back that claim.

The incident comes as the Conservatives are trying to douse a separate political flare-up [http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadavotes2011/story/2011/04/11/cv-election-ag-report-reaction-1244.html] over Fraser's draft audit of summit spending.
The Canadian Press reports that a draft copy of that audit slams the Conservatives for spending close to $50 million on dubious summit projects completely unrelated to the international events, and misleading Parliament in the process.

The draft report also suggests the process may have been illegal, according to The Canadian Press.
Conservative candidate John Baird, speaking as the former transport minister in charge of infrastructure funding, claimed he has read a later draft of Fraser's audit that makes no reference to the Harper government's misleading Parliament.

The fall of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's minority government last month forced Fraser to shelve plans to present her final audit to Parliament April 5.