RCMP are tight-lipped at the early stages of investigating past spending at the Thompson-Nicola Regional District.
Officials have stresses their former CAO did not technically break any rules, because there were few, if any, that existed. According to Kamloops This Week, former CAO Sukh Gill spent $517,000 on his taxpayer-funded work credit card between 2015 and 2020, with most of the spending for he and other staff and directors, on luxury hotels, fine dining, coffee shops, wineries and other high-cost discretionary locations.
Kris Sims of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation tells the NL Noon Report this boils down to two issues.
The first was the lack of rules or policies to ensure accountability.
“Alongside of that, though, are bookkeeping issues. Accounting issues. Financial issues,” Sims said. “[Hypothethically], if you say that ‘this car rental was for work,’ but you turned around and took the car to the Calgary Stampede for fun and you didn’t tell the truth on your financial report, then that’s when police are called.
“Also, let’s say theoretically that a bureaucrat rents a hotel for a couple days and they say it’s for business purposes but then it turns out it wasn’t and they wrote it down as business or for work, that would be considered by many to be fraudulent.”
On March 23, the TNRD forwarded information to RCMP about potential financial irregularities, and the Federal Serious and Organized Crime Financial Integrity Unit has now taken over the investigation.
Sims says this further demonstrates the need for an effective and well-funded Municipal Auditor General. She notes this should be a non-partisan issue.
“Every single member of every single party or slant should want this. Because it keeps everybody honest. It keeps you all on the same playing field, and it also helps people have confidence in their local government. That person is much more likely to get out there and vote or to actually volunteer their time in their local community if they trust the system.”
At this point, RCMP say it’s too early in the investigation to determine if any of the materials and concerns brought to them by the TNRD concerning potential criminality amount to a chargeable offense.
Meanwhile, an auditor was at Kamloops city council on Tuesday and says the city doesn’t have the same kind of spending concerns like the TNRD has had.
Partner at BDO Canada Mario Piroddi says he hasn’t read the spending policies at the regional district, but says spending policies at the city are “different.”
“Your policy has been revised a number of times, and there are best practices out there. And we’ve looked at not only ‘are you adhering to your policy,’ but part of when we talk about internal control recommendations, we do look and compare against best practices. And what you do have in place is in line with what proper practices are.”
Councillor Arjun Singh said there is a “heightened awareness” of how governments spend taxpayer dollars after what happened at the regional district.
– with files from Colton Davies