CALGARY, AB: The Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) is renewing its call on the federal government to put all expense receipts online after learning that PC leadership candidate Jim Prentice’s expense receipts have been destroyed by the federal department of Aboriginal Affairs & Northern Development (AAND).

The CTF filed an Access to Information and Privacy (ATIP) request for Prentice’s expense records with AAND on March 27, 2014. On May 7, 2014, AAND informed the CTF that it had destroyed all of Prentice’s expense receipts under the ‘Multi-Institutional Disposition Authorities’ (MIDA). On the same day, the CTF referred AAND to Section 4.1 of the MIDA, which explicitly exempts nearly all documents in a ministers’ office from destruction. The CTF requested an internal review to determine if any mistakes had been made, and one month later, AAND reaffirmed that it had in fact destroyed all of the records requested.

“The destruction of Mr. Prentice’s expense receipts concerns us greatly,” said CTF Alberta Director, Derek Fildebrandt. “We live in the digital age, there’s no reason why these documents couldn’t have been scanned, put on the website and retained, rather than shredded.”

In a telephone conversation with AAND officials, the CTF was told that the department did not know ‘who’ ordered the records destroyed or ‘when’ they were destroyed, and refused to clarify specifically how Section 4.1 of the MIDA – which exempts records in ministers’ offices from destruction – did not apply to Mr. Prentice’s ministerial expense records.

“There is an accountability problem here,” said Fildebrandt. “We have no way of determining if Mr. Prentice’s ministerial expenses were above board or not, because his former department destroyed all of the receipts. We also don’t know who destroyed them, or when. It’s a black hole of information.”

“After the way Alberta’s top cabinet ministers have behaved over the last two years, we don’t just take their word for it anymore. The CTF has a simple demand of politicians: ‘show me the money’,” concluded Fildebrandt.

The CTF also filed ATIP requests for Mr. Prentice’s expense claims for his time as ministers of Industry and Environment and will release them once obtained.

To view the original ATIP request click HERE

To view AAND’s response to the CTF click HERE