Federal Conservatives were quick to blame the auditor general's findings of government mismanagement on their Liberal predecessors, and used the report to pressure the Senate to pass a long-delayed accountability bill.

Treasury Board president John Baird said many of the government management problems outlined by the Auditor General Sheila Fraser could be fixed if the Liberal-dominated Senate would pass the bill, known as C-2, which was a key Conservative campaign promise in the last federal election.

The bulk of wrongdoings found in Fraser's report were "the legacy of slack oversight and mismanagement" of the Liberals during their 12 years in office, Baird charged.

"We won't let this get swept under the rug, as has happened all too often in the past," Baird told reporters on Tuesday following the release of Fraser's report, which exposed a wide range of mismanagement of government programs, practices and spending.

"Any dollar misappropriated, we will take any and all actions"  to recoup those funds, he added.

The bill has undergone hundreds of changes in its back-and-forth path between the Senate and House of Commons since the Tories introduced it in April.

Among other things, the bill proposes creating an independent parliamentary budget officer to analyze the way the government manages its financial planning, and conduct research at the request of all-party committees monitoring budget matters.

'Ironclad protection'

It also calls for "ironclad protection" for whistleblowers, and rewarding bureaucrats who reveal wrongdoing with cash bonuses of up to $1,000. 

Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day said he's looking to the current corrections investigator to recover money that Fraser said had been improperly spent by the agency's previous ombudsman, Ron Stewart.

The report alleged Stewart, a former star in the Canadian Football League, often skipped work and collected $325,000 in improper or questionable salary, vacation pay and expenses between 1998 and 2003. None of the allegations have been proven in court.

Day said the RCMP would investigate the accusations made against Stewart, but noted the alleged offences occurred before the Tories took power.

"We're taking these allegations very seriously," Day said Tuesday following the report's release.