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June 13 Grant MacEwan College: a Culture of Deception?This post is a direct response to a letter I received last month from Alberta Advanced Education & Technology Minister Doug Horner, a letter written, he indicates at the request of Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach, after I sent both men a link to a previous post on Grant MacEwan College and the Auditor General's 2009 report. (I gather from Horner's letter that he wouldn't have bothered to write me if he hadn't been pushed to do so by Ed Stelmach. No surprise there, considering the tone of his previous letter to me in 2007. More on that in a little while. I have also done a new video in response to Doug Horner's latest letter. The Name of the video is the same as this post: Grant MacEwan College: a Culture of Deception?
I'll start by setting out the references in the video and then flesh it out with commentary and additional material.
The Folder to the left of this blog where I am storing the references for the video, Grant MacEwan College: a Culture of Deception?
is named Grant MacEwan College a Culture of Deception . In it, I have uploaded the following records, for the convenience of readers and viewers of the video:
03. October 10, 2008 Minutes of the Grant MacEwan College Board of Governors' regular public session
04. October 26, 2006 Minutes of the Grant MacEwan College Board of Governors' regular public meeting
05. October 11, 2007 Minutes of the Grant MacEwan College Board of Governors' regular public meeting
Those are the main new references. I will provide the URLS for others as I start adding commentary to this post.
In addition, my original "MacEwan Report," to which I occasionally refer in this blog-post, may be found, together with the references cited in it, in the the folder named 'MacEwan Report,' to the left side of this blog.
Alberta Advanced Education and Technology Doug Horner's May 07, 2009 letter to me, Marnie Tunay, written, he indicates, at the behest of Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach, regarding Grant MacEwan College and Alberta Auditor General Fred Dunn's concerns , is one for the how-stupid-do-they-think-I-am file.
In April 2009, I wrote a blog-post regarding Auditor General Fred Dunn's stated concerns and Doug Horner's dismissive response, about the "tone at the top" of Grant MacEwan. I sent a link to the post to Doug Horner and to Ed Stelmach, and I told them I wasn't going to let the story be forgotten.
In his reply, Horner assures me that the very fact of the Auditor General's report and recommendations means that, yes, Virginia, there is "accountability" at MacEwan. He also assures me that the College is working to address the issues in the AG's report.
Let's start by examining his first assurance. His exact words are: "The Auditor General's findings and recommendations are evidence that the audit process is effective and ensures the accountability of Alberta post-secondary institutions."
There are two claims in that sentence:
1. The Auditor General's audit process is effective.
2. The Auditor General's audit process ensures the accountability of Alberta post-secondary institutions.
Neither claim has enough truth in it, as we shall see.
1. The claim that the Auditor General's audit process is "effective" begs the question: effective in what way? His stated role (page 01 of his April 2009 Report) is to "identify opportunities and to propose solutions to improve the use of public resources, and improve and add credibility to the government's reporting. And AG Fred Dunn carries out that role in his April 2009, very well. He makes a number of recommendations and sharp criticisms pertaining to MacEwan (which we shall examine in detail later on in this post.) On page 83 of his report, he says: "We reported the internal control weaknesses [at MacEwan] from our financial statements audits to management, so they can assess and investigate if if the weaknesses may have resulted in fraud occurring." [emphasis mine] And then, Fred Dunn goes on to spell out what his team hasn't done as part of its mandate at the College: "We did not assess or investigate if fraud occurred." [emphasis mine] He then concludes: "In our view, the weaknesses increase the risk of fraud or other inappropriate activity."
I think most people tend to assume that an audit is effective if it determines whether or not fraud took place. But Dunn is saying that a fraud investigation was not part of his mandate. His mandate was only to determine the degree to which the College was open to fraud - and his conclusion was that the College is very vulnerable on that score. It is, he says, up to the College administration to investigate whether or not fraud actually took place.
To summarize: The Auditor General's report is very effective in determining and reporting on strengths and weaknesses. It is not at all effective in determining whether or not fraud took place in the College.
On to assertion number 2 in Horner's letter:
2. "The Auditor General's audit process ensures the accountability of Alberta post-secondary institutions." This is the assertion that qualifies Doug Horner's letter as being a political flim-flam - of the brassy, how-dumb-does-he think-I-am variety? For starters, let me remind the reader that Horner's letter was written in response to my previous post on MacEwan and the AG's report: Promises, promises, from Grant MacEwan College execs to the OAG [Office of the Auditor General] - in which said post I slammed Horner for dismissing out of hand the AG's reported concerns about "the culture" and "the tone at the top" of Grant MacEwan. So clearly, Horner doesn't pay much stock to what the Auditor General says, and yet, he's telling me that it is the Auditor General who "ensures accountability." Of course, as Horner knows, the AG can only report - it is up to the College and, ultimately, to Minister Doug Horner to heed the AG's report. Moreover, as I said above, the audit process cannot "ensure" that there is no fraud - because that's not part of its mandate.
Now that we've established the reality that Horner's assertions are in any case of doubtful validity, we are ready to examine the particulars of MacEwan's current reporting issues, within the context of the College's recent reporting history, with a view to answering the questions that Doug Horner simply dismissed out of hand: How valid is the Auditor General's concern about the culture at Grant MacEwan? If an auditor says, as the Edmonton Journal reports the Auditor General as having said, "I am concerned about the culture within that organization [MacEwan]," then it is reasonable to infer that the "culture" in the impugned organization may be hostile to accountability in some sense; in other words, the culture may be such as to foster behavior that decreases accountability rather than increasing it. We call such a culture 'a culture of deception.'
The response of the College to Auditor Fred Dunn's harsh criticism has been, so College spokesman David Beharry says, to "establish a Presidential task force" and to hire an "independent" auditor to "look at the school's current practices." [Excuse me, but didn't the independent Auditor General just finish taking a good "look at MacEwan's current practices?" Sounds to me like somebody's shopping around for a second opinion.]
Doug Horner's response to Dunn's report and remarks is to (1) dismiss the Edmonton Journal's suggestion that perhaps MacEwan has a leadership problem; and (2) promise to "raise the Auditor General's concerns" at the next meeting of Alberta college executives, to ensure, thereby, that the college execs "will take another look at their controls." How very reassuring - not.
My new video on this topic, Grant MacEwan College: a Culture of Deception? is a companion video to this blog. It goes into the specific causes for the Auditor General's concerns, which I won't address here, as I've cited in the video the pages I've quoted, from the AG's report, and the Report is available on this site. What I want to address here more deeply are the causes for scepticism I touched on in the video - scepticism regarding the assurances from the College and from Doug Horner that all is basically well at MacEwan; and that the current leadership will take effective and timely action to address Fred Dunn's concerns.
Why should the assurances that all is well or soon will be at MacEwan, from: Advanced Ed Minister Doug Horner; College spokesman David Beharry; MacEwan President Paul Byrne and the rest of the Board of Governors, be received with scepticism?
Reason 1. The evident discrepancies between what the Auditor General claims in his report and said in a news conference that he has told MacEwan executives over the years - and what MacEwan Governor and Audit Committee Chair Harold Kingston says he was told by the Office of the Auditor General.
On page 02 of the Auditor General's April 2009 Report, AG Fred Dunn points out that previous recommendations his Office made to MacEwan executives, regarding "staffing and systems information issues" "and its internal control weaknesses" have still not been satisfactorily addressed:
This isn't the first time that MacEwan's "system information issues" have made the news. In my original report on variances and anomalies in MacEwan's public reports, I discussed the fact of the leaks of students' confidential financial data in 2002 - 2003 and again in 2006, as reported by the Edmonton Sun, as well as the lack of objective data to support MacEwan VP Finances Brent Quinton's claim to the Alberta Legislature's House Accounts Committee in October 2007, that "policy development" had been done "to enhance security of information assets." [page 37]
On page 81 of the AG's April 2009 Report, Dunn states that "significant weaknesses in inventory and petty cash" have been unresolved since September, 2007," and he then expounds upon that point. Contrast Dunn's remarks with MacEwan Audit Chair Harold Kingston's version of how the September, 2008 meeting with "the OAG" went, given to the Board in the October 10, 2008 Board Meeting Minutes: [page 02, section 2.2] "Kingston summarized the September 25 exit meeting with the Office of the Auditor General. He observed the OAG is satisfied with MacEwan progress on the passed [sic] year's items." So, if Kingston is to be believed, the "Office" of the Auditor General was "satisfied" in October 2008, - but, if the Auditor General is also to be believed, then the latter was highly dissatisfied a mere several months later (since that April 2009 report wasn't written overnight).
Well, capricious, much? Who's a cranky ol' auditor, then?
Except, that, frankly, there are other grounds for scepticism when it comes to the Governors' published versions of issues at the College, and some of those grounds particularly relate to Harold Kingston.
Leaving aside, for the moment, the grounds for being wary in general of what the MacEwan Board of Governors has to say regarding its accountability challenges, there is also, for starters, the discrepancy between Kingston's characterization of the 2006 exit conference with the OAG, and that of Chief Financial Officer Brent Quinton's characterization of the 2006 conference, one year later:
On page 3, s.3.3 of the MacEwan Board's October 26, 2006 Meeting Minutes, Kingston says that the College received "a clean audit" [one of Kingston's favourite phrases, I've noted] from "the Auditor General." Yet, one year later, on page 6, s.4.2 of the MacEwan Board's October 11, 2007 Meeting Minutes, Brent Quinton notes that "The [2007] exit conference with the Auditor General showed significant improvement from last year's feedback." [emphasis mine] So, the 2006 conference was "clean" - but the 2007 conference showed "significant improvement" over the 2006 conference? What's 'cleaner than clean'? Sounds like a detergent commercial. Bottom line: somebody wasn't telling the whole truth about the 2006 exit conference.
Then, there's Kingston's previous dismal history with respect to attendance at the Board's six regularly scheduled meetings. I outline just some of that history, together with that of other chronic absentees John Brick and Tim Melton, and regular no-show Robert Seidel at Academic Governance Committee meetings, on page 20 of my 2007/08 private citizen's report, the "MacEwan Report." Even when I first complained about the non-attendance records to Advanced Education Minister Doug Horner in February 2007, (see page 02 of the MacEwan Report), nothing changed - and it wasn't until I published my updated Report on this site, that the Governors Harold Kingston and Tim Melton started showing up for all the meetings. (Robert Seidel continued to be a regular no-show until the end of his tenure last June.)
(As of this writing, the Board Meeting Minutes show that Kingston showed up for the first four meetings in the 2008/09 fiscal period. The Minutes for the April and May Board meetings have not yet been published and probably won't be until September or October 2009. The publication of the Board minutes usually lags at least three months and usually more than that, after the meeting took place.)
July 10, 2009 update re Board Meeting Attendance: The minutes to the April 07, 2009 Board Meeting are now available: MacEwan Board April 07, 2009 Meeting Minutes Guess who wasn't there? Actually, Kingston wasn't the only one. A third of the Board didn't show up.
The relevant point about Kingston's previous dismal attendance history is: Can a person who apparently had to be compelled by bad publicity to show up for six, just six, regularly scheduled meetings over the period of ten months, - meetings for which he receives an "honorarium" from the College - (meaning, 'from us, the tax-payers who primarily fund the College'), can such a person be relied upon to give an accurate accounting of events that took place within the purview of his duties with respect to those meetings - or even to know what really occurred?
In addition to the concerns particular to Kingston, there are the concerns which apply to all of the Grant MacEwan College Board of Governors over the past few years, (with the exceptions, I would say, of: the student Governors, who are probably helpless to make a real difference in how the Board does anything, and the staff members, who probably wouldn't dare to speak up against anything the President or the "public" members, such as long-time Tory supporter and former Tory fund-raiser, Board Chair Eric Young, did or said.)
One "Performance Measure" on which the Governors have a long history of fudging the facts, is 'student satisfaction' at the College.
My 2008/08 Report on Grant MacEwan College goes into this issue in detail, for the years 2005 - 2007, inclusive, on pages 22 - 24, inclusive.
For example, the Governors have a recent history of fudging the stats on student satisfaction in one of the reports that they must submit annually to the Ministry of Advanced Education (formerly, Alberta Learning). The name of the report is the 'MacEwan Strategic Plan and Budget Strategies,' and every year, the Governors have to produce and submit a new one, which takes into account the next four fiscal years. (The fiscal year of the public colleges runs from July 01 to June 30 of the following year.)
Let's take a look at what they've said in that document, over the past three fiscal periods:
The College Student Satisfaction Surveys are published bi-annually; the last two were published in 2007 and 2005. This means that the only published source for 2006 satisfaction data available to the Governors was the MacEwan University Transfer Followup Report 2006, pub. March 2007. That document states on page 17 that "student satisfaction with the overall quality of their education" among university transfers was "88%." However, the Board's 2008 to 2012 Strategic Plan states on page 13 that "91%" of university transfers were satisfied with the overall quality. The 2008 to 2012 Strategic Plan was published in May, 2007, three months after the 2006 University Transfer Follow-up Report.
How many students were satisfied in 2007 with the overall quality of their education?
According to the MacEwan 2007 Student Satisfaction Survey, pub. January, 2008, "33% were very satisfied and 48% were satisfied." The rest were "neutral or dissatisfied." (page 09)
But the Governors' Strategic Plan 2008 to 2013 spins those figures, claiming on page 14 that 81% were "fully satisfied," - and it even cites the 2007 Survey - so, clearly, the Governors knew or should have known that the 2008 to 2013 Strategic Plan was telling a wee fib.
The Governors' 2010 to 1014 Strategic Plan Budget makes the same claim regarding students satisfaction, on page 12. But the 'wee fib' gets stretched considerably in the Annual Report which is produced for public consumption rather than for the Ministry of Education. The MacEwan 2007/08 Annual Report to the Public claims on page 24 that, according to the "2006/07 Student Survey," "student satisfaction was 95%." On the same page, the Governors claim that "student satisfaction in 2004/05 was 96% according to the 2004/05 Satisfaction Survey."
The reality? Page 07 of the MacEwan 2005 Student Satisfaction Report states that "80% of the students were satisfied/very satisfied and the rest were neutral/dissatisfied."
But credit for the biggest whopper on student satisfaction goes to Governor Paul J. Byrne, President and CEO of Grant MacEwan College. The October 18, 2007 Minutes of the Alberta Legislature's House Accounts Committee session report on page PA-223, (page 17 in your browser), that Paul Byrne told the Committee that student satisfaction was "98%." No year is given or source - but it doesn't matter, because, no matter what year we look at or what published source - it just ain't true, not by a long stretch.
And Byrne is the head of the College's new "task force" set up by him to deal with the Auditor General's concerns. Isn't that reassuring.
(More on Byrne a little bit later in this post.)
And now, a word about Eric Young, the Chair of the Board of Governors, formerly the head of Northlands in Edmonton. I don't like the guy - and here are the reasons why:
I think he's a weak Chair, if for no other reason than the fact that he was evidently unable to persuade 30% of the Governors to show up for board meetings over the course of his terms as Chair - until I motivated them by publishing the MacEwan Report, which called out the culprits on page 20. The Governors showed up when Janet Riopel was Chair of the Board of Governors at the College. Moreover, I can't help wondering if Young's history as a former President of the Tories' fundraising arm, the Progressive Conservatives Association of Alberta, isn't a big reason for Doug Horner's evident disinterest in the concerns expressed by the Auditor General or myself over the years. As an enlightened woman, I also take great exception to a coarse remark he is quoted as having made at a MacEwan fund-raiser, the 2006 Mad Hatter's Ball. Nick Lees, of the Edmonton Journal, quotes Young as having "quipped there was lots of goosing and peckering going on" at the Ball. ["Hats Off to...", Nick Lees, Edmonton Journal. April 12, 2006. page B.3]
However, having said all that and taking into account the reporting issues which apply to all of the public Governors and to Paul Byrne, - I know of no accountability issues that are particular to Eric Young. What his problem is, I don't know. Maybe he's just not in control at the College. I think that's a distinct possibility.
And speaking of Big Whoppers, the College has sold a few in recent years on the subject of enrolments [enrollments]. Leaving aside for the moment the ones for which MacEwan spokesman David Beharry's department, Communications and External Relations, must be specifically held responsible, here are the ones which cast doubt on the willingness of the Board of Governors to tell the truth in matters of accountability:
The MacEwan Annual Report 2006/07 states on page 11 that: "16, 430" credit students were enrolled, 17,554 non-credit students were enrolled, and there were 5,877 Sports and Wellness Centre clients" - making - get this: a grand, (I use the word advisedly], a grand total of "50,199 clients served." Somebody, get those people an adding machine! Typo or not, it is an inexcusable error, at best. Twelve people sit on that Board. Not one of them caught a whopping anomaly like that?
And Doug Horner can't believe Auditor General Fred Dunn is worried about the "tone at the top" and the "culture" at the College.
 Sadly, there's more:
On February 23, 2007, the Edmonton Journal published an interview with MacEwan President Paul Byrne. The article states that "Paul Byrne is responsible for... 42,000 students." [Career path for MacEwan CEO a long and winding... Nick Lees, Edmonton Journal, Feb. 23, 2007, Final Edition, page B.3] [See two paragraphs down for the actual figures].
This claim of "42,000 students" is for the same fiscal period covered by the MacEwan 2006/07 report discussed in the preceding section. On February 15, 2008, Nick Lees told me in an email that he was sure he had checked the accuracy of the statistics in the article with Paul Byrne, before the article was published.
I also think that blame for the fact that the College's Strategic Planning Dept. turned a blind eye to a false claim it published but did not write on 2006 enrolment statistics, must be ultimately laid at the doors of Board Chair Eric Young and President Paul Byrne. A promotional sheet titled "Fact-sheet: Economic Impact of Grant MacEwan College," claims that "34,544" credit and non-credit students were enrolled at the College in 2006. The "Economic Impact" fact-sheet was published in August, 2007.
Yet, two other Strategic Planning "Fact-sheets," one published in September, 2007, and the other one, published in November, 2007, and a "MacEwan Profile," pub. July 2007, all state that the correct numbers for 2006 were "16,575 credit students" and "17,250 non-credit students," which, for those without a calculator handy, adds up a total of 33,825 credit and non-credit students - not "34,544."
For more on public reporting issues pertaining to the Board as a single entity, browse through my 'MacEwan Report,' which you can download in word or PDF, in this folder to the left of the blog: MacEwan Report , where you can also access the references cited. A very small number of references, such as newspaper reports, are not included in that folder, but they are indexed in the report with complete access information. If you have any difficulties or questions, please don't hesitate to contact me, via this web-site, or via my email address: fakirscanada@shaw.ca .
Next up, in the look at accountability issues: no, it's not Paul Byrne. And the reason it's not, is that quite a number of the reporting anomalies that Byrne signed off on, were or should have been, prepared by the guy whose name has figured most prominently in my materials on the College: VP Finances/VP Corporate Services/Chief Financial Officer - Brent Quinton.
Let us begin with what I said in the video, about discrepancies between what the Auditor General has said, and what Brent Quinton has reported as being the feedback from "exit conferences" with the Office of the Auditor General (OAG):
On page 94 of his April 2009 report, AG Fred Dunn says, "We noted more errors, totalling about $1.7 million. The College had expensed them...but should have capitalized them. Of this amount, the College adjusted the financial statements for $856,000."
Quinton's version of the feedback from the OAG is quite different. On page 2 of the October 10, 2008 Board Meeting Minutes, Quinton is quoted as having "advised" the Govenors that "the OAG's notation related to classification of capital expenses" "related to an item of low materiality on which the OAG's office provided late notice to the College." - as if it was somehow the AG's fault that MacEwan Finances had screwed up. And, "low materiality?" $1.7 million? Maybe if your last name is Trump.
On page 81 of the AG's April 2009 report, Dunn states that he first discussed "significant weaknesses" in MacEwan's internal controls and a forensic investigation with management in "September 2007." Here's how Quinton tells the story: On page 6 of the October 11, 2007 MacEwan Board Meeting Minutes, Quinton is quoted as having told the few Governors who showed up for the meeting that "The exit conference with the Auditor General showed significant improvement from last year's feedback." So, the AG's "significant weaknesses" were really a "significant improvement" from 2006?? Just how bad was the 2006 feedback from the AG? Except that Harold Kingston said...oh, never mind - let's move on...
In any case, I doubt that Alberta Advanced Education and Technology Minister Doug Horner thought that the 2009 feedback from the Auditor General was a "significant improvement," - On May 06, 2009, - one day before Horner wrote his most recent letter to me, House Accounts Committee Chair Hugh MacDonald cited that feedback as a primary consideration for his rejection of Horner's Bill 27, which would have significantly increased Horner's control of research funding in Alberta. Hugh MacDonald and I had previously had a little email back-and-forth about Paul Byrne's claim to his committee in 2007 that 98% of students at MacEwan were satisfied. See page 24 of my MacEwan Report for the details of that chit-chat.
Back to Brent Quinton. My 2007/08 MacEwan Report details a very long list of anomalies and variances in the public reports of MacEwan, dating from 2001 through 2005, with a focus on the 2005 fiscal period and some updates through 2007. With the exceptions of the stats on student satisfaction and enrolments, at the root of most other issues is some report on financial data, - the responsibility for the preparation of which lies with Quinton.
For example, there is a $2 million-plus discrepancy in revenues in the 2005 MacEwan report to the Charities Directorate of the Canada Revenue Agency. (see page 08 of the MacEwan Report. Remember, both the Report, in PDF or word format, and the evidence cited in that report may be found in the MacEwan Report Folder, to the left of this blog.)
Paul Byrne signed off on that discrepancy. But in all likelihood, it was Brent Quinton who prepared the report. I know this, because MacEwan Policy D7010 says on page 2, section 2.2.10, that "The Chief Financial Officer is to be the sole authorized agent to draft, for necessary College signatories, all taxation, grant, or other financial statements, reports or documents."
Probably, neither Paul Byrne nor Cathryn Heslep, who signed off on numerous and significant discrepancies in those reports to the Revenue Agency (see the MacEwan Report for details and evidence), ever read the reports before they signed off on them.
Oh, sure, they should have read what they were going to sign. But seriously, if your Finance Guy is standing right there, waiting for your signature, isn't it human nature, and particularly Canadian, to not want to offend him by appearing to be 'checking his work?' Of course, it is.
As for the provincial reports, MacEwan's law firm, Reynolds, Mirth, Richards & Farmer, filed the ones that don't have any issues of credibility. As for the others, Quinton filed those; and I discuss those in a previous post that is mostly concerned with those records: Update on MacEwan Report and Hadis i-Erbain .
No, where the real issue of accountability for those messed-up reports and the many other financial issues lies with the Board and with Paul Byrne is: why would you keep a guy like Quinton around, who makes close to $200 K a year, and is clearly not doing an acceptably good job of managing the Finance Dept? Personally, it makes me wonder what Quinton's hold is, over the Board and over Byrne; or is it a case of "birds of a feather?"
It's my tax dollars those people are pissing away in half-a-million-dollar-writeoffs - I want to know what their problem is - and, above all, I want to know why Doug Horner seems to be asleep at the wheel. And, judging from Hugh MacDonald's blunt remarks in the 2nd reading of Bill 27, I'm not the only one who's worried on that score.
(I like 'blunt.' I do like MacDonald. I regret that Alberta doesn't have more public servants like him and Fred Dunn.)
Next in our consideration are reporting issues pertaining to ubiquitous College spokesman David Beharry, de facto head of Communications & External Relations at the College. Beharry's department is responsible for the publishing of such "official College publications" as the Annual Reports and the Calendars, among others.
Beharry's department has repeatedly published claims about student satisfaction, and claims about enrolments, that are not supported by the facts. For example, page 90 of the "Think MacEwan" 2008/09 promotional Calendar claims that in 2006, "39, 362" students were enrolled. As we have previously seen in the section above on another piece of promotional material, "Economic Impact..." the correct stats appear to be considerably less than that: 16,575 credit students and 17,250 non-credit students.
Communications & External Relations was still insisting, as of January 30, 2009, that "95% of the students were satisfied with the overall quality of their education in 2006/07." As we have seen previously, according to the 2006/07 Student Satisfaction Survey, the true number was "81%."
Beharry's credibility with respect to these two "Performance Measures" is such as to fail to fill me with confidence regarding his assurances that the College is working on resolving the Auditor General's concerns.
Last, but not least, the fact that Auditor General Fred Dunn's budget has been repeatedly cut by the Stelmach government, which had promised greater accountability and transparency before it was elected - does not inspire confidence in the Stelmach government's own "tone at the top" and "culture."
There is an old saying that "fish begin to stink at the head." At the end of the day, the buck for accountability at Grant MacEwan stops with Doug Horner and Premier Ed Stelmach. If there's a serious problem at the top in Western Canada's largest tax-payer-funded College, then it is probably symptomatic of a larger problem in government.
I am sceptical that the College will resolve its 'reality challenges' any time soon. I predict that it will take enrolments that continue to fall, and continued drops in donations, to catalyze real change at MacEwan. Hell, if the Auditor General can't get them to get it together, then there's no hope of "significant improvement" in any form except more pretty promises from "the top."
Personally, I feel concern about those three "forensic investigations" at the College mentioned in the Auditor General's April 2009 report; and I suspect from his comments that he does, too. I really hope those investigations are targeting people who merit them.
And I hope this post and the companion video to it, Grant MacEwan College: a Culture of Deception? will be of use to people who are considering getting involved with the College or its top administration in any manner.
May it be of benefit to them, and to the tax-payers of Alberta.
September 16, 2009 update: Of some relevance to my concerns about "forensic investigations" at MacEwan, and of possible interest to anyone considering employment with MacEwan is an article from the College's own student newspaper, Intercamp, which boldly states that Mark Mahl, the former athletics director at Grant MacEwan College, was fired without cause. I'd heard of the case and touched upon it briefly in my original 2008 report on the College.
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