Oda apologizes for confusion over handling of funding decision
Posted March 18, 2011 4:09 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
International Co-operation Minister Bev Oda blames a clumsy bureaucratic process in her office for what she says is confusion about her handling of a funding decision for an aid agency.
She says she’s sorry for what she says was “a very crude process.”
“I take full responsibility for the confusion … and I apologize for that,” she told MPs on Friday.
She was testifying before a House of Commons committee, which is considering whether to declare her in contempt of Parliament over her handling of the decision and the subsequent confusion.
The controversy centres on a document in which the Canadian International Development Agency recommended that Oda approve funding for Kairos, a church-based relief group.
She decided not to OK the funding and the document includes the handwritten addition of the word “not.”
The minister told a Commons committee in December she didn’t know who added the word.
On Friday, she said she later learned her chief of staff inserted the word in the funding document and then had it signed with an automatic pen.
Oda says that was standard procedure in her office because documents weren’t drafted to allow the minister to override a decision without a handwritten addition of “not” or “does not.”
She also says she was telling the truth in December because she only found out later who did it.
Opposition MPs on the procedure and House affairs committee grilled Oda sharply.
They suggested she originally approved the Kairos funding, then backtracked on orders from Prime Minister Stephen Harper. And they said Kairos was chopped because of its stance on Israel.
Oda said she never discussed the issue with Harper.
She said the funding proposal included $880,000 for various advocacy campaigns in Canada — a poor way to spend international development money.
The process has been changed to eliminate handwritten additions to documents, she added.
