A rchive Date
[ 26-12-2004 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Canada ]
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[Thou shalt not ...
RICK GIBBONS - Ottawa Sun
May 26, 2002
Don Boudria isn't the first cabinet minister to face nasty accusations of a lapse in ethical judgment, though he is by my count the first to seek absolution through a priest. He is also, by any standard, the most sanctimonious cabinet minister ever to wear the crown of thorns.
The Public Works minister cut his teeth in politics by seizing on even the slightest whiff of unethical behaviour to demand ministerial resignations by the dozen during his Rat Pack years on the opposition benches. Suffice to say that what goes around has a nasty habit of coming around.
His wall is decorated with the stuffed heads of more than a few Mulroney-era Tories. So he shouldn't be too surprised that the opposition goes hunting for his one day.
He has certainly given them ample opportunity, both in accepting the use of a cottage owned by the head of a Liberal-friendly advertising company, but also by his laughably self-righteous defence, complete with a sworn affidavit from a parish priest. What galls people most, however is that, of all people, this guy should know better.
In the past nine years, the Chretien government has constructed for itself a surreal world where cabinet ministers do no wrong, where there are never any firings, where ethical standards are whatever the prime minister says they are, where the ethics counselor reports only to the prime minister who, in turn, reports to ... well, nobody.
It has taken nearly a decade of sorry boondoggles, cockups, slimy deals and repeated denials, but finally the prime minister has decided to craft his own Ethical Commandments to set the rules for ministerial conduct and to more closely regulate everything from fundraising to the activities of lobbyists.
What is surprising is that it has taken this long for the government to finally recognize that the absence of clear rules of conduct helped create the breeding ground for unethical activity.
Why Chretien didn't put in place clear rules of conduct remains a mystery, especially since he promised to do exactly that in the government's infamous Red Book of election promises nearly a decade ago.
Maybe an explanation for this failure to publicly set the rules of ethical conduct can be found in a little noticed speech by the prime minister's ethics watchdog, the much maligned Howard Wilson, to a major international conference on - what else? - ethics held in Ottawa two years ago.
Here's what Wilson had to say to a room of experts on ethics in government:
"When the government created my office and appointed me as ethics counselor in 1994, it decided to avoid the path some others had taken earlier. Canada's government decided against trying to rigidly list every sort of unethical behaviour, through a series of 'Thou Shalt Nots.'
"They knew we have plenty of laws against obviously corrupt practices and those do work. What we lacked was a system to address the gray areas - things that might be ethically questionable, without meeting some kind of criminal law standard of proof. It is simply not sufficient to deal only with real conflict. In public life, appearance is reality.
"Another reality is that Canadians expect those in public life will act with honesty and uphold the highest ethical standards.
"We did it by starting from the perspective that public office holders want to take ethical actions. We have a clear set of principles for assessing situations. We have a few rules and procedures. We encourage officials to see and address potential problems before they become real ones. We offer advice on specific cases. And we undertake enquiries.
"Yes, it lacks the apparent cut and thrust of a system based on the assumption that all people in public life are greedy and unethical. Yes, I do not get the chance to be the crusading, zealous prosecutor, chasing public evildoers, real or imagined, for years on end.
"But I would say that what we built works."
Well, apparently not. The prime minister is now in the process of creating his own list of 'Thou Shalt nots.' We're left to wonder, would most Canadians view his government as corrupt had he done so nine years ago?
Rick Gibbons is Editor-In-Chief of the Ottawa Sun and can be e-mailed at rgibbons@sunpub.com Letters to the editor should be sent to oped@sunpub.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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