BOOK EXAMINES HRDC SPENDING SCANDAL

A federal opposition focused less on policy than on administrative slip-ups, a highly attentive media and the mishandling of an internal audit by Human Resources Development Canada (HRDC) combined to turn a fixable administrative matter into a fiscal scandal, says David Good, author of a new book about the 2000 HRDC audit. The adjunct professor in UVic’s school of public administration was HRDC assistant deputy minister when national headlines proclaimed the government had lost $1 billion dollars. In The Politics of Public Management, Good reviews the procedures and practices leading to the audit, examines the response by the media, senior administrators and politicians and proposes changes to prevent a similar scandal from occurring again.
“I think HRDC is still in an over-reactive mode to the audit. In a crisis it’s natural to tighten up procedures on the front line. But once the crisis has passed you need to cut down on the red tape and the bureaucratization. The chilling effect from the audit still exists,” says Good.
The Politics of Public Management is the first and only extensive critical examination of the events surrounding the HRDC audit controversy.

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