Hydra House funding over and clients transferred

Community Action, Sept 20, 2004

WINNIPEG -- Provincially-funded clients of Hyda House, a privately owned addictions treatment agency, are being transferred to other facilities, Family Services and Housing Minister Christine Melnick announced. Since the Auditor General's review of the handling of provincial funds by the managers of the agency, an interim, third-party management organization has monitored financial transactions at Hydra House.

Tory opposition leader Stuart Murray complained that the Hydra House management has continued to use a placement service agency whose head is the spouse of a senior Hydra executive who was named in the Auditor General's report.

In response to the auditor's review, the Manitoba government is now in the process of establishing:

* a five-member Agency Accountability Unit, similar to the one disbanded in the 1990s;

* an implementation team to develop an action plan for improved accountability and transparency for the use of public funds; and

* continuing government review of any and all ways to recover misused funds.

No new clients have been placed with Hydra House since the auditor general's report in July. Now the current clients are being transferred to the agencies along with the funding.

The report of Auditor General Jon Singleton said that Hydra House had used more than $l million in government funds on bonuses to executives, trips to Florida, purchases of expensive cars, meals, furniture and home renovations.