Before the sponsorship scandal broke, two government audits cited the Sponsorship Program as a problem area. Those reports were brushed off by the government and all but ignored by the media.

The Green Party realizes that good governance requires transparency, and consequences for wrongdoing. We will amend the Auditor General Act to keep such scandals in the public eye until they are addressed.

Our amendment has six prongs:

1. When a department or program scores poorly on a performance or compliance audit, the minister responsible will be required to defend a plan to reform the offending body in front of the the Public Accounts Committee. The plan must address each point made in the initial report, and be acceptec by the Committee.

2. If a department or program scores poorly on a performance or compliance audit twice in four years, the following budget allocation for the offending body will be reduced by the amount of money that was improperly spent. The government will only be able to raise the allocation above those levels through a vote of parliament. Since such a vote is a money bill, the failure to pass would be a non-confidence vote.

3. Any internal audit that finds a department or program systematically violating the spirit and the letter of the law involving total funds over $100,000 will be forwarded to the Auditor General's office for further investigation. The Auditor General will be permitted to repeat the audit immediately, and comment on it, potentially invoking the mechanisms mentioned above.

4. If a department or program scores poorly twice under the same minister at any time in the minister's career, the Prime Minister will be required to ask for the minister's resignation in the House of Commons.

5. The Auditor General's mandate will be increased to include agencies receiving funding from the federal government. Since these agencies are numerous, a random group of agencies would be tested annually. If an agency scores poorly on a performance or compliance, it will be re-audited the following year.

6. The House voted in 2003 to "develop and report annually on a set of social, environmental and economic indicators of the health and well-being of people, communities and ecosystems in Canada." The Green Party will strengthen that resolve by increasing the mandate of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development to evaluate departments based on the goals of the government, as well as their own stated goals.

Note: the Government of Canada Throne Speech, 2004? made very prominent mention of ecological and social indicators as did the Canadian federal budget, 2004?.