Forgery allegation raises questions about suspected impropriety at Niagara Parks
A detailed allegation of forgery involving a Niagara Parks Commission employee arose during a government investigation of a complaint to Ontario’s Integrity Commissioner in 2008, but it is unclear what, if anything, ever came of the allegation.
The suspected forgery, in which an employee allegedly signed a parks executive’s name to a contract to stage a concert in Niagara Falls, was disclosed on Sept. 16, 2008, to two investigators probing an unrelated complaint concerning an untendered lease the commission had approved for the Maid of the Mist tour-boat operation.
The person who disclosed the alleged forgery was Bob Gale, a then-member of the parks commission’s appointed board, the same person who had filed the integrity complaint.
Mr. Gale, who provided The Globe and Mail with a transcript of his statement to investigators, is still wondering if anyone in the government followed up on the allegation. The employee in question still works at the parks commission.
“No one ever came down and sat with me and went over anything,” Mr. Gale said Sunday. “I’d think [they] would want me to expand on some of these things.”
The forgery allegation raises new questions about what the Ontario government knew and did about suspected impropriety at Niagara Parks, the 125-year-old agency that manages Canada’s busiest publicly owned tourist attraction.
The Globe has already reported that two Liberal MPPs including a cabinet minister, James Bradley, received complaints about alleged improper conduct at the agency as early as 2005. The government did not intervene in the agency’s affairs until 2009, after Mr. Gale had gone public about the Maid of the Mist lease, which the province has overturned and put out to tender.
A Globe investigation since then has uncovered audits critical of the commission and $400,000 in travel spending by Joel Noden, a senior agency executive, between 2006 and 2009. Mr. Noden, who was fired without cause on Nov. 9, has said the expenses were justified and in line with commission policies of the period.
According to Mr. Gale’s statement to provincial investigators, it was Mr. Noden’s signature that was allegedly signed by another parks employee on the concert contract. Mr. Gale told his interviewers he “was told that an employee had forged Joel Noden’s signature on a $200,000 contract to stage a concert” for which adequate sponsors could not be found. As a result, “The concert was cancelled and we [the parks commission] lost $40,000,” Mr. Gale told the investigators.
The interview was conducted early on in the investigation of Mr. Gale’s July 2008 complaint to Integrity Commissioner Lynn Morrison. The complaint was referred to the forensic investigation team of the Ontario internal audit division of the Ministry of Finance, which, in turn, retained a private fraud investigation firm called BMCI Consulting Inc., of Ottawa, to help with the probe.
More than 20 people were interviewed over several months, including Mr. Gale and everyone else on the politically appointed 10- to 12-member board that oversees the $77-million-a-year Crown agency. Electronic records and documents were also reviewed.
When the investigation was finished, Ms. Morrison released an 11-page public statement in March, 2009, which referred only to findings around the Maid of the Mist decision. The investigation cleared the commission’s then-chairman of wrongdoing in that context, but Ms. Morrison further recommended provincial audits of the agency’s governance and procurement practices.
She made no mention of the alleged forgery or any other potentially criminal matters having arisen during the investigation.
Ms. Morrison, through a spokeswoman, declined to answer questions from The Globe about the forgery allegation.
“The Office followed the legislated process for handling this disclosure and received all information in confidence,” Cathryn Motherwell, director of the commissioner’s office, wrote in an e-mail. “The Office’s position has always been that the Integrity Commissioner’s statement of March 16, 2009, speaks for her on this matter.”
Ms. Motherwell suggested The Globe take its questions to the Finance Ministry, since it oversees the forensic investigation team. A Finance spokesman, however, said the questions would be “more properly directed to the Ministry for whom the investigation report was prepared, in this circumstance the Ministry of Tourism.”
Mukunthan Paramalingham, a spokesman for Tourism Minister Michael Chan, said the ministry will look into the matter.
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