Ottawa's culture of entitlement
By Neil Reynolds
November 23, 2005
Globe and Mail
OTTAWA -- In his famous 1960s experiment, Stanford University psychologist Philip Zimbardo abandoned two cars in different neighbourhoods -- one in the Bronx, one in Palo Alto, Calif. The licence plates had been removed, the hoods left open. Within 10 minutes, in the Bronx, people were stealing parts; within three days, the car was trashed. In Palo Alto, nothing happened for seven days. When Prof. Zimbardo intervened, and smashed the windows with a sledgehammer, people completed the demolition within a few hours. It was from this experiment that two criminologists, James Q. Wilson and George Kelling, developed the "broken window" theory of crime.
Thus, as expressed by Messrs. Wilson and Kelling, the fundamental law of moral conduct: Anything broken and not quickly fixed induces criminal behaviour.
From this perspective, a Mr. Fix-It mentality reduces crime as effectively as a police force -- perhaps more effectively. The law-enforcement process becomes a sequence of simple questions. What's broken? Who's responsible? Whose job is the fix? Why hasn't it been fixed? In his report on the sponsorship scandal, Mr. Justice John Gomery went directly to the central issue with three words he put on the cover: Who Is Responsible? The sponsorship program was a broken limo abandoned on a Montreal street. The gang that stripped it did precisely what the punks did to Prof. Zimbardo's car in the Bronx. The primary moral misconduct, however, resided with the owner of the car. With former prime minister Jean Chretien. It was his job to call the tow truck. If he had, there would have been neither criminal conduct nor moral misconduct.
The Zimbardo experiments showed that the abandoned car offers more than a no-risk chance to break the law. It extends an entitlement. (What was it former U.S. president Bill Clinton said when asked why he had dallied with Monica? "Because I could.") When Judge Gomery attributed sponsorship scandal misconduct in the federal bureaucracy to "a culture of entitlement," he was describing an ethic that authorizes any misconduct that people think they can get away with. By no means limited to government, it warps contemporary morality. Many people feel entitled to whatever it is they want and recognize no obligation in return. Judge Gomery cited "the refusal of ministers, senior officials in the Prime Minister's Office and public servants to acknowledge responsibility for the problems of mismanagement that occurred."
The sponsorship scandal is a parable for this country's coast-to-coast culture of government-driven entitlements. At the top, a political and bureaucratic elite extends privileges and benefits to all the right people and all the privileged organizations -- subsidies, grants, guaranteed loans, sinecures, contracts.
In a short time, these benefits transform into rights that are as "titled" as the deed to a house. In the end, we are more and more governed by elite constituencies of special interests, all of them entitled to whatever they can get. Entitled, as defiantly expressed by former Royal Canadian Mint head David Dingwall, to their entitlements.
Look at Canada's premier collection of entitlements, the federal-provincial transfer program. In this murky exercise, our senior governments move $16-billion a year around the country, back and forth, every dollar hemorrhaging value with each successive stop. Anne Golden, president and CEO of the Conference Board of Canada, once described it this way: "The formula includes myriad exceptions, side deals, one-off arrangements and offset payments. It is so complicated that no one understands it. It is significant that it takes the federal government 42 months to close the books on the program's fiscal year." In dollar volume, this program has induced more dirty deals than a thousand sponsorship scandals.
In one of his several Mr. Fix-It performances last year, Prime Minister Paul Martin determined that this vast entanglement, equally incomprehensible as inequitable, would no longer rest upon a mere agreement. It would be, forthwith, an entitlement. Forever and ever. Mr. Martin guaranteed that no federal government would reduce the amount of money that goes into the program now. He guaranteed, indeed, that the government would slip another 3 per cent a year -- $480-million -- into the program, regardless of core inflation rates, regardless of whether it was needed in any authentic way.
With this, Mr. Martin vastly expanded, and entrenched, the culture of entitlement over which he, for the moment, presides. In its most recent report on Canada's economy, the International Monetary Fund recoiled. "Equalization payments," the IMF said bluntly, "should not be entitlements." It called on the government to reform the system to ensure "a transparent and equitable" program.
In his sponsorship report, Judge Gomery observed: "The concentration of power in the office of the prime minister is a phenomenon of modern Canadian government." In Canada, a prime minister can -- all by himself -- decide what to fix and what not to fix, can decide who's entitled to more, who isn't. We should note, in passing, the relentless demise of a fundamental principle of democracy -- that all people are equal under the law. That principle is wreckage now, long since abandoned and trashed.
By Neil Reynolds
November 23, 2005
Globe and Mail
OTTAWA -- In his famous 1960s experiment, Stanford University psychologist Philip Zimbardo abandoned two cars in different neighbourhoods -- one in the Bronx, one in Palo Alto, Calif. The licence plates had been removed, the hoods left open. Within 10 minutes, in the Bronx, people were stealing parts; within three days, the car was trashed. In Palo Alto, nothing happened for seven days. When Prof. Zimbardo intervened, and smashed the windows with a sledgehammer, people completed the demolition within a few hours. It was from this experiment that two criminologists, James Q. Wilson and George Kelling, developed the "broken window" theory of crime.
Thus, as expressed by Messrs. Wilson and Kelling, the fundamental law of moral conduct: Anything broken and not quickly fixed induces criminal behaviour.
From this perspective, a Mr. Fix-It mentality reduces crime as effectively as a police force -- perhaps more effectively. The law-enforcement process becomes a sequence of simple questions. What's broken? Who's responsible? Whose job is the fix? Why hasn't it been fixed? In his report on the sponsorship scandal, Mr. Justice John Gomery went directly to the central issue with three words he put on the cover: Who Is Responsible? The sponsorship program was a broken limo abandoned on a Montreal street. The gang that stripped it did precisely what the punks did to Prof. Zimbardo's car in the Bronx. The primary moral misconduct, however, resided with the owner of the car. With former prime minister Jean Chretien. It was his job to call the tow truck. If he had, there would have been neither criminal conduct nor moral misconduct.
The Zimbardo experiments showed that the abandoned car offers more than a no-risk chance to break the law. It extends an entitlement. (What was it former U.S. president Bill Clinton said when asked why he had dallied with Monica? "Because I could.") When Judge Gomery attributed sponsorship scandal misconduct in the federal bureaucracy to "a culture of entitlement," he was describing an ethic that authorizes any misconduct that people think they can get away with. By no means limited to government, it warps contemporary morality. Many people feel entitled to whatever it is they want and recognize no obligation in return. Judge Gomery cited "the refusal of ministers, senior officials in the Prime Minister's Office and public servants to acknowledge responsibility for the problems of mismanagement that occurred."
The sponsorship scandal is a parable for this country's coast-to-coast culture of government-driven entitlements. At the top, a political and bureaucratic elite extends privileges and benefits to all the right people and all the privileged organizations -- subsidies, grants, guaranteed loans, sinecures, contracts.
In a short time, these benefits transform into rights that are as "titled" as the deed to a house. In the end, we are more and more governed by elite constituencies of special interests, all of them entitled to whatever they can get. Entitled, as defiantly expressed by former Royal Canadian Mint head David Dingwall, to their entitlements.
Look at Canada's premier collection of entitlements, the federal-provincial transfer program. In this murky exercise, our senior governments move $16-billion a year around the country, back and forth, every dollar hemorrhaging value with each successive stop. Anne Golden, president and CEO of the Conference Board of Canada, once described it this way: "The formula includes myriad exceptions, side deals, one-off arrangements and offset payments. It is so complicated that no one understands it. It is significant that it takes the federal government 42 months to close the books on the program's fiscal year." In dollar volume, this program has induced more dirty deals than a thousand sponsorship scandals.
In one of his several Mr. Fix-It performances last year, Prime Minister Paul Martin determined that this vast entanglement, equally incomprehensible as inequitable, would no longer rest upon a mere agreement. It would be, forthwith, an entitlement. Forever and ever. Mr. Martin guaranteed that no federal government would reduce the amount of money that goes into the program now. He guaranteed, indeed, that the government would slip another 3 per cent a year -- $480-million -- into the program, regardless of core inflation rates, regardless of whether it was needed in any authentic way.
With this, Mr. Martin vastly expanded, and entrenched, the culture of entitlement over which he, for the moment, presides. In its most recent report on Canada's economy, the International Monetary Fund recoiled. "Equalization payments," the IMF said bluntly, "should not be entitlements." It called on the government to reform the system to ensure "a transparent and equitable" program.
In his sponsorship report, Judge Gomery observed: "The concentration of power in the office of the prime minister is a phenomenon of modern Canadian government." In Canada, a prime minister can -- all by himself -- decide what to fix and what not to fix, can decide who's entitled to more, who isn't. We should note, in passing, the relentless demise of a fundamental principle of democracy -- that all people are equal under the law. That principle is wreckage now, long since abandoned and trashed.
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