[Bruce_the_vii]

A case for more specialize government Auditors

The Auditor General, Sheila Fraser, reports annually and is usually pretty hard hitting. She’s a breath of fresh air in government as far as the tax payer is concerned. Most people will be familiar with her work.

At the same time we now have a Parliamentary Budget Officer, currently Kevin Page, who has been in the newspapers question the government’s figures. He seems to raise good points. Again citizens will be familiar with him.

My idea is there be an Immigration Auditor, a R & D Auditor and a Post Secondary Education Auditor.

In particular the Immigration Auditor would voice an opinion on skilled labour shortages, something business trump up all the time. At the same time this is an important issue and the Auditor could advocate more rather than less particular skills from time to time. He would vet the various sources of information., which are all biased.

Similarly R & D is now more and more difficult and a watchdog is in order. The Globe and Mail recently ran two investigative pieces on how the R & D tax credit to businesses is abused. One government report on the $4 billion program is that the net return per year is only some $50 million, all the rest going to dodgy projects. The people that wrote the report could determine this. So an auditor might work. An R & D auditor might not vet the 20,000 small projects a year but rather pick winners that would seem to have some payback potential. It might advocate specific projects that have world importance. Things like biofuels which put pressure on the world food supply are not winners. I see it as actually vetting the National Research Council itself which involves itself in rather a lot of small time issues.

In addition a Post Secondary Education Auditor might produce results. There are a million baby boomers about to retire but at the same time the education streams currently are popular and large so we need to look at the numbers. Should the core professions like pharmacy be boosted at the cost of liberal arts, and that. Young people could really use some numbers.

So, auditors.