The topic: Money going missing in the Prince George Government Agent’s Office

What’s new:
An undisclosed amount of money went missing from the Prince George Government Agent’s Office last year. After a thorough internal investigation, the fate of the money, which may have come from private citizens’ payments, is still unknown. Outside observers and government representatives say there was clearly a procedural breakdown.

Why it’s important:
Service B.C.’s Government Agent’s Office handles money coming in from the public. Any government service fees, such as B.C. Hydro bills or hunting licenses, can be processed through the office. This means that potentially large sums of money are coming and going from the Prince George location, the city being the largest urban centre in northern B.C.

An internal memo from the Ministry of Finance, obtained through a Freedom of Information request, released in February 2017, details the investigation into the missing money.

According to the memo, the money went missing between March 18 and March 23, 2016. The document is highly redacted, so the amount of money gone is unclear, but it was enough to prompt local policy changes as well as an investigation by the Ministry of Finance.

The investigation was co-run by the Ministry of Technology, Innovation and Citizen’s Services, under which the Government Agent’s Office operates, and Ministry of Finance, which investigates monetary issues.

According to the memo, the investigative team noted that initial response to the missing money was swift, they filed a report and contacted the local RCMP detachment immediately.

Investigators questioned ten people who were working in the department over the five-day period, the memo says. Over the course of the investigation no employees admitted to loosing or stealing the money, and none offered any insight into how it might have happened. The investigation therefore came up inconclusive.

What the government says:
The memo, as well as the Ministry of Finance website, note that there are strict guidelines set out for Government Agents handling money. The full extent of these guidelines, however, is not public.

Tasha Schollen, communications director for the B.C. Ministry of Technology, Innovation and Citizen’s Services, says that the investigation into the missing money concluded that staff had become lax in handling cash and revenue. They have since been reprimanded and reminded of proper procedure for dealing with money.

What others say:
Dan Simunic is a professor of accounting at University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business. After analyzing the heavily redacted memo, Simunic says that the Government Agent’s Office was operating under a “non-system.”

“What’s really lacking,” says Simunic, “is internal control over how cash is handled.” He continues, “You should not have ten people with access to the cash. This is auditing 101.”

Simunic says that there are some fundamental auditing principles that should have been followed. Chief among them is limited access to the cash. He suggests that one have clear lines of responsibility and authority for the people who work there.

“Theres no excuse when you have an office of ten people that no one person is accountable,” says Simunic, “it’s egregious.”

Simunic says that with responsibility comes accountability for missing money.

What’s next:
According to Schollen, the Prince George government agent’s office has put into place new procedures, including ensuring that the deposits are secured at all times, and requiring employee signatures for access to the cash room and safe.

Schollen also said that there are more safeguards that have been put into place, but for security reasons, they will not release further details.

Supporting Documents:

1) This page of the memo shows that there was money missing, and that an investigation was launched. The FOI request was put in to the Ministry of Finance (not by me, I got this from the website). This information was helpful because it provides the story: the fact that there was money missing.

2) This page of the memo shows that there were ten people questioned in this investigation. Therefore the investigation did take some time and resources, so it was not a throw away amount of money. The expert, Dr. Simunic, highlighted that the number of people with access to the money was likely a factor in the inconclusive result.  The FOI request was put in to the Ministry of Finance (not by me, I got this from the website).

Access to information requests:

Source: City of Vancouver, Crime Statistics, Data accessed March 10, 2017

In 2016, a Square One Insurance report said that Vancouver had the most bikes stolen per capita of any major city in Canada. Square One found that there were 513 bike thefts per capita in Vancouver, whereas the next highest on the list, Calgary, had 250 thefts per capita.

Vancouver, a city where bikes are frequently used as smogless, traffic-friendly alternatives to cars, saw bike theft increase steadily between 2011 and 2015, according to the afore mentioned data analysis. According to the same analysis, thieves have stolen more than 13,000 bikes since 2011.

“It’s an epidemic,” says J Allard, creator of the 529 Garage, a bike registration database.

But there’s hope. For the first time in five years, bike thefts have dropped, and it may just be thanks to Allard.

In October 2015, the former Microsoft executive teamed up with the Vancouver Police Department in a public awareness campaign for bike theft prevention and recovery.

Source: Vancouver Police Department, 2015

According to Sgt. Randy Fincham of the Vancouver Police Department, the Log it, Lock it or Loose It   initiative is, “A fairly extensive public awareness

campaign encouraging owners to lock their bikes and record their serial numbers.”

Allard and the police have been holding workshops, distributing flyers, and talking to the public about how best to protect their bikes.

In the year that followed the campaign launch, there were 433 fewer bikes stolen in the city of 630,000 people, according to the City of Vancouver statistics.

HUB Cycling, a non-profit cycling advocacy group in Ottawa credits Allard’s partnership with the police for lessening thievery. “There’s wider increased awareness of bike theft being an issue across the city, I think that more people are cognisant to it now,” says Ellie Lambert, the communications director for the group.

Lambert notes the initiative’s emphasis on lock education, as the campaign has been promoting the best way to lock a bike and has introduced loaner locks at businesses for those who may have forgotten their locks at home.

Locks are important to Allard. “The harder you can make it for the thief, the more discouraged the thief will be, and move onto the next one,” says Allard, advocating for thick steel locks, “they take three minutes and sparks to remove.”

Common advice seems to be, leave the cable lock at home and invest in a more expensive, more durable variety.

The Log it, Lock it or Loose it campaign also encourages people to register their bikes with Allard’s database, Garage 529.

Allard says that Garage 529 is “a unified database for bycicles,” where users, bike shops, law enforcement and other organizations, like universities, can register bicycles.

People send in the bike’s serial numbers, a picture of the bike, make and model, date of purchase and ideally a picture of the owner with their bike. Then, if a bike goes missing, there’s a dossier for a police report, insurance claim, and for distribution on social media.

Garage 529 is also an app connected to the database, and if a bike is reported missing, any users within 15 kilometres of said disappearance get a notification on their phone.

“It’s like an amber alert system for bikes,” says Allard.

Still spinning from success in Vancouver, Allard is expanding his database in British Columbia, and is even in talks to bring the registry out east, to Toronto and Ottawa.

Source: City of Vancouver. The map above breaks down bike theft by neighbourhood, with the most bikes being stolen in and around the downtown core.