An executive position at the [Canadian Standards Association] is a pretty cush gig. The CSA’s only oversight is the Standards Council of Canada, an outfit run by former executives of the CSA. The Council is run by Industry Canada, which for years had as its senior advisor a member of the Board of Directors of the CSA. There seems a circularity to these relationships. The cush gig extends to money, the CSA being indeed a money machine. They can compel people to buy their products and they can charge whatever they wish. The CSA is exempted from the accountability and transparency requirements that they drafted for others to follow. They have acquired for themselves thirty-six offices around the world located for practicality at major industrial centres like the Brook Hills Golf Resort and the Bluegrass Yacht and Country Club. They also spend over $65k per day on travel though, in fairness, RestoreCSA is hearing noises from the CSA’s CFO group that the $65k per day they officially reported as travel expenditure wasn’t really spent on travel. In the Mike Duffy mindset, one shouldn’t take expense reporting too literally.
No doubt, they spend some money that is not strictly business related, but what actually happens with the tens of millions they generate and where has this money gone for the past four decades? I suspect that their income over that stretch is in the tens of billions. Where has it gone and who is responsible for overseeing this organization, besides the executives or past executives.