Sunday, March 17, 2013

Father Fantino knows best

Over a year ago Falling Downs ran a story about how American taxpayers were on the hook to finish Canada's work on the Dahla dam restoration project in Afghanistan. The trigger for that story was an on-line tender request posted by the US Army Corp of Engineers.

Last summer the Toronto Star published a lengthy article detailing the failures of the Canadian project.

Last week the Star ran a story by Jessica McDiarmid raising more questions about just how much of the budget was squandered on security contractors.

Today the Star printed a blistering rebuttal from none other than Julian Fantino, Minister of International Cooperation and the titular overseer of the Canadian International Development Agency.

McDiarmid obviously failed to do her due diligence.

Canada's work in Afghanistan, and especially on the Dahra dam, has been "exemplary."

"The results of this initiative actually tell the real story... "

Well, that's true, Mr. Fantino, and the result has been that the US Army Corp of Engineers has been finishing the job you're taking credit for, a job botched from the beginning by CIDA and SNC-Lavalin.

And a year on, knowing what we know now about SNC-Lavalin's corporate culture of corruption, perhaps it might be more useful to mount an inquiry into what happened to the money, rather than singing the praises of a job that clearly didn't get done.




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