Running With Scissors

So Justice Gomery released his (Phase I) report today. If you're looking for media reaction, Timmy has some links for you.

I have to say, scandals!! don't really interest me a whole lot. On an intellectual level, I appreciate that it is important for us to keep watch for government officials who don't follow proper procedures, and even more important that corruption like the transferring of funds to crown corporations and the extorted kickbacks to the Quebec wing of the Federal Liberal party is rooted out and exposed - but it just doesn't excite me.

My personal opinion, based on my limited reading, is that Chrétien wanted to a create a sponsorship 'program' to counter the similar efforts of sovereigntists in Quebec. But it seems like he was worried that if he went through the usual process/channels, it would take too long and get bogged down in red tape. Instead he got his chief of staff, Jean Pelletier to personally make sure it got done quickly and he in turn brought in Chuck Guité (says Gomery: "Mr. Guité had a well-known reputation as a public servant oriented to obtaining results by cutting through red tape.").

In order to get things done quickly, Guité bypassed the established (by Chrétien, to prevent the kind of partisan contract awarding that happened under Mulroney all the time) process for awarding contracts. Unsurprisingly, influential ad agencies who stood to benefit from these contracts were probably pushing the process the whole way, and took advantage of the lack of oversight of this program as much as possible. The really fatal decision was the one to contract out to the private sector the job of administering the contract awarding process. You don't have to have read Jane Jacobs 'Systems of Survival' on how corruption inevitably results from confusing public and private sector functions to know that this was a bad idea.

In the end, it seems that an already corrupt Quebec wing of the Federal Liberal party got into the act to do some unorthodox 'fundraising' for the party, and even internal audits and bringing in a replacement for Guité (Gagliano) failed to root out the corruption in the program. From Gomery: "Kroll Lindquist Avey (which carried out the forensic audit for this Commission) undertook an administrative review of the Sponsorship Program in October 2002 for PWGSC to determine if there should be disciplinary action against employees of PWGSC. It reported on February 4, 2003, that 130 of 136 files had instances of noncompliance with the law or with government policies."


Call me a cynic, but I'm not sure this episode really tells us much about the relative moral integrity of the Liberal party vs. the other federal parties. I'm a firm believer that power corrupts and my feeling is that if the Conservative party had been in charge for the same length if time we would have found as many or more similar scandals under their watch. The NDP does have more integrity, in my view, but this is correlated with the fact that they are unlikely to gain power, so those who run for the NDP are generally less interested in gaining power. On the other hand, their inexperience with government might well lead them to fall into more errors of the sort that allowed the sponsorship program to go awry in the first place. It's hard to say.

To me, the bigger lesson here is in the importance of what we generally refer to dismissively as 'red tape'. Sure there are undoubtedly many cases of needless rules and regulations, but on the other hand, government procedure exists for a reason. Sidestepping (or eliminating) this procedure can save time and money, but it is not worth the increased corruption likely to result. Similarly, it can be easier (and cheaper sometimes, but often not) to contract out government services to the private sector, but we need to take care to ensure that core government functions - especially oversight/administrative functions - are kept in the hands of non-partisan public servants.

I will be more interested to hear what Gomery has to say in terms of recommendations for how we can improve the system to prevent recurrences of this breakdown. And also interested to see what the parties promise in the next campaign which should start after Gomery's next (Phase II) report (if not sooner). Clearly, greater protection for civil servants who wish to expose corruption is a must. As Gomery euphemistically notes,

"Only one subordinate, Allan Cutler, dared to challenge Mr. Guité's authority and methods and, as a result, he was declared surplus by Mr. Guité."

No, this doesn't mean that one third of Cutler was given to taxpayers, one third was spent on programs and one third was applied to the debt, it means that he stuck his neck out and Guité, with impunity, took a swing at it. As long as the people who expose corruption suffer more than the people who commit it (even the ones that get caught), we can't be overly confident in the system.

Having said that, I think that in the vast majority of cases, the system does work. While part of me feels it is a waste of time to put so much focus on something with such little impact on taxpayers which happened under a previous government, part of me also feels that if this is the worst scandal anyone can come up with, we're not doing too bad.

I'm glad the Gomery inquiry was called because it does send a clear message that corruption will not be tolerated by the people. If future politicians are not motivated by their sense of morals to avoid sidestepping proper process or engaging in petty corruption, perhaps they will be motivated by fearful memories of this little episode.

But I also think we need to acknowledge that most politicians and public servants work hard with little recognition to make this country better and I wouldn't want talented, qualified people to be discouraged from going into politics or the civil service because they think either that government is always corrupt or that working in government is not worth it because you can never do anything without being worried about how it will be perceived or that you can't get anything accomplished because there is too much red tape.

It's a fine balance, and the Liberals got it wrong in this case. What rule changes will enable us to keep this balance the best in the future? Which party is most likely to implement (and follow!) these new rules? A couple of important questions for the next election.