Interim auditor general John Wiersema waits to appear at House of Commons public accounts committee on Parliament Hill. Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press

There are still questions about the way the Conservative government handled G8 spending and paperwork, a government watchdog says.

Interim Auditor General John Wiersema told MPs Wednesday it's up to Parliament to ask those questions about why the government didn't follow its own rules in the way it handled decisions around the spending of $50 million in the Huntsville, Ont., riding of Treasury Board President Tony Clement. The area got the money for improvements ahead of the 2010 G8 summit.

Wiersema said the government wasn't able to provide any paperwork about how decisions were made, and civil servants were cut out of the process. Recent media reports show Clement worked directly with the town's mayor, dealing with him through his personal email account, which isn't subject to federal access to information laws the way his ministerial account is.

"There are lots of questions and I believe those are questions that could be put at a subsequent committee hearing if the committee decides to have a hearing on the legacy fund," Wiersema said following a two-hour appearance at the House public accounts committee.

"I’m not convinced that more audit work is what's called for here. I believe this is now a matter for Parliament to deal with," he added.

"I contemplate no additional audit work. These projects clearly had to do with legacy projects in the Muskoka region and the degree to which they were supported or needed for the summit is already a matter of the public record."

Wiersema told MPs that getting money out the door fast shouldn't trump the need to follow proper procedure.

"I don't think this is a situation that requires more rules. I believe the rules are there," he said. "What we need is consistent application of the existing rules."

Wiersema said he went back to the deputy minister of one of the departments where public servants should have been involved in deciding on the spending, and reconfirmed that they were given no say in selecting which projects would be approved.

"I stand behind that conclusion that public servants were not involved in the selection of the projects," he said.

Asked about it later, Wiersema said the normal process would be for public servants to select the projects that would get funding, with cabinet ministers not involved in the process.

He said in 33 years of working for the Office of the Auditor General, he's never seen public servants cut out of project spending decisions the way they were as Conservative cabinet ministers selected 32 projects for the $50-million G8 Legacy Fund.

Wiersema's predecessor, Sheila Fraser, conducted the audit of the legacy fund, which Parliament approved as part of a border infrastructure fund. Huntsville is hundreds of kilometres from the border.