Still ironing out the wrinkles
Mark Steyn - Monday,12 December 2005
Western standard
Well, they got away with it. Paul Martin wants to make it absolutely clear that he takes the Gomery report very very seriously, so he’s hiring 300 new federal auditors.
Wow! Three hundred new auditors! Let Paul Martin be perfectly clear on this: this isn’t the old Liberal party culture of corruption, no sir. It’s the all-new Liberal party culture of corruption, now with full supporting cast!
Granted, the sponsorship program that got him in this mess in the first place did, in fact, go through four separate federal audits, all of which “raised red flags.” Presumably, the red flags raised were those Sheila Copps’ Maple Leafs, federally funded to the tune of $45 per and outsourced overseas to a company that neglected to attach any eyelets, sleeves or halyards, thus rendering them unflyable. So as soon as the red flags were raised they promptly fell down again, and life in the Liberapalooza sponsorship program continued as before.
But who knows? Maybe if it had gone through not four but 54 or 104 audits, at some point someone would have raised a red flag that stayed up, and the hordes of Grit wheeler-dealers would have said, “You know something? Auditor #102 is right. We need to cut this stuff out.” Maybe 300 new auditors aren’t enough. Maybe we need 3,000. There’s no way to know till the next scandal. But the prime minister’s willingness to hire 300 just for starters is a sign of how seriously committed he is to giving the appearance of doing something. And if half those 300 new auditors start putting in expense claims for four-figure lunches, we’ll make sure each auditor is personally audited by 300 new auditors all of his own. And if that’s still not enough we’ll hire a bunch of Quebec public relations firms to launch a campaign to attract more auditors. As many as it takes, even if it takes the entire adult population of la belle province.
To get the flavour of the world the Liberals have made, consider this chipper press release from Scott Brison’s Public Works and Government Services Department outlining the scale of the “reforms”:
“As part of this new approach, integrity provisions will be embedded in all contracts to provide a clear statement of the obligations currently set out in the Criminal Code, including prohibitions against paying, offering, demanding or accepting bribes or colluding with others to obtain a contract.”
Who knew? As Messrs Martin and Brison see it, we had plenty of jolly useful laws against bribery and so forth, the only problem was we didn’t put a big enough sign up in the lobby. Now, when you enter the reception area, you’ll be greeted by a placard saying, “Travaux publics et services gouvernement aux Canada--PLEASE DO NOT OFFER A BRIBE AS A REFUSAL MAY OFFEND.” That should do the trick, shouldn’t it?
Back in the Trudeaupian golden age, you may recall, the great man’s barnstorming transformation of Canada was momentarily halted by a storm about barns. It emerged that some overzealous officers of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had burned down barns belonging to Quebec separatists. The press was briefly exercised over this, but M. Trudeau gave one of his famous shrugs and airily remarked that, if people were so upset by the Mounties burning down barns illegally, perhaps he’d make the burning of barns by the Mounties legal. As the great George Jonas commented:
“It seemed not to occur to him that it isn’t wrong to burn down barns because it’s illegal, but it’s illegal to burn down barns because it’s wrong. Like other statist politicians, Mr. Trudeau seemed to think his ability to set out for his country what is legal and illegal also entitled him to set out for his citizens what is right and wrong. He either didn’t see, or resented, that right and wrong are only reflected by the laws, not determined by them.”
This is a distinction all but lost in the decayed Dominion’s political culture. Mr. Brison’s new guidelines are anxious to promote the idea that Adscam happened because the parties involved were not up to speed on what’s legal and illegal. That’s not the problem. It’s that they no longer know what’s right and wrong. I’d wager very few of the vast numbers of Liberal cronies, bagmen and wardheelers were unaware that what they were doing was against the law. And, if they were happy to break the existing laws, giving them three or four more laws to break and a couple dozen more regulations to ignore and 300 more audits to file in the basement is unlikely to change their basic approach to government. And why should it? In a one-party state, they are the law. They rule their fiefdoms: these are, in Alphonso Gagliano’s casually proprietorial phrase, “my crowns.”
The language of the Westminster parliamentary tradition assumes integrity: “my right honourable friend,” “the honourable member” and, in the House of Lords, all that stuff about “the noble earl opposite.” The minute you can no longer assume it, the minute you have to have armies of “ethics commissioners” to put it all down in sub-clauses and appendices, the game is up. Queen Elizabeth I’s reign had the courtly intrigues of the Earl of Essex. Queen Elizabeth II’s has the kabuki “transparency” of 300 earls of ethics. When Liberal hacks drone on about “da Canadian values,” we should know what that boils down to: we now live in a political system where, when dealing with a minister of the Crown, one is obliged to sign a piece of paper undertaking not to offer a bribe to him or accept one therefrom.
The Gomery process represents a rare example of strategic clarity from the famously “perfectly clear” Martin: by tarring the entire political culture, he preserved his own viability within it. I doubt anybody believes the official version--that the minister of finance was apparently unable to see beyond the end of his nose for an entire decade--but those few thousand voters in Ontario who decide federal elections have reacted not with “Boy, those politicians. We really need a change in Ottawa,” but with the traditional pseudo-cynicism of the eternal sucker: “Boy, those politicians. Everybody does it, eh?” And, if everybody does it, why change? The beauty of the Gomery report is that, while it may outline various breaches of this or that guideline or even law, the “meta-story,” as they say, is wholly favourable to the one-party state: as David Warren summed it up, “it confirms the Liberal Party pays for its friends.”
Furthermore, from the point of view of those of us on the right, if the issue is Liberal corruption, we’re unlikely to benefit from any fallout. One notices in conversation with “progressive” friends that they now regard the Liberal party the same way they did the Soviet Union: nothing wrong with Communism, just a few wrinkles putting it into effect; nothing wrong with Liberal party values, just a few wrinkles in the Quebec branch of the promotions department. On that turf, no good will accrue to conservatives, as various NDP poll upticks here and there already indicate. Thus, the magnificent reduction of Canadian politics: the looming showdown in Vancouver Centre between Hedy Fry, the incendiary promoter of bogus Klan scares, and Svend Robinson, the light-fingered gay. Yes, yes, Svend, I know, that characterization is homokleptophobic, but you’ll have to win the election to get it made a new hate crime. A fantasist vs. a kleptocrat is almost too neat a précis of the Canadian political scene, even if, for 100 per cent accuracy, the respective party labels should be reversed.
In the end, people get the government they deserve--as we’ve seen on the news from Paris these last couple of weeks, and before that in the German election. My sense right now is the Grits are heading back to majority territory. C’mon, Ontario, prove me wrong.
Mark Steyn - Monday,12 December 2005
Western standard
Well, they got away with it. Paul Martin wants to make it absolutely clear that he takes the Gomery report very very seriously, so he’s hiring 300 new federal auditors.
Wow! Three hundred new auditors! Let Paul Martin be perfectly clear on this: this isn’t the old Liberal party culture of corruption, no sir. It’s the all-new Liberal party culture of corruption, now with full supporting cast!
Granted, the sponsorship program that got him in this mess in the first place did, in fact, go through four separate federal audits, all of which “raised red flags.” Presumably, the red flags raised were those Sheila Copps’ Maple Leafs, federally funded to the tune of $45 per and outsourced overseas to a company that neglected to attach any eyelets, sleeves or halyards, thus rendering them unflyable. So as soon as the red flags were raised they promptly fell down again, and life in the Liberapalooza sponsorship program continued as before.
But who knows? Maybe if it had gone through not four but 54 or 104 audits, at some point someone would have raised a red flag that stayed up, and the hordes of Grit wheeler-dealers would have said, “You know something? Auditor #102 is right. We need to cut this stuff out.” Maybe 300 new auditors aren’t enough. Maybe we need 3,000. There’s no way to know till the next scandal. But the prime minister’s willingness to hire 300 just for starters is a sign of how seriously committed he is to giving the appearance of doing something. And if half those 300 new auditors start putting in expense claims for four-figure lunches, we’ll make sure each auditor is personally audited by 300 new auditors all of his own. And if that’s still not enough we’ll hire a bunch of Quebec public relations firms to launch a campaign to attract more auditors. As many as it takes, even if it takes the entire adult population of la belle province.
To get the flavour of the world the Liberals have made, consider this chipper press release from Scott Brison’s Public Works and Government Services Department outlining the scale of the “reforms”:
“As part of this new approach, integrity provisions will be embedded in all contracts to provide a clear statement of the obligations currently set out in the Criminal Code, including prohibitions against paying, offering, demanding or accepting bribes or colluding with others to obtain a contract.”
Who knew? As Messrs Martin and Brison see it, we had plenty of jolly useful laws against bribery and so forth, the only problem was we didn’t put a big enough sign up in the lobby. Now, when you enter the reception area, you’ll be greeted by a placard saying, “Travaux publics et services gouvernement aux Canada--PLEASE DO NOT OFFER A BRIBE AS A REFUSAL MAY OFFEND.” That should do the trick, shouldn’t it?
Back in the Trudeaupian golden age, you may recall, the great man’s barnstorming transformation of Canada was momentarily halted by a storm about barns. It emerged that some overzealous officers of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had burned down barns belonging to Quebec separatists. The press was briefly exercised over this, but M. Trudeau gave one of his famous shrugs and airily remarked that, if people were so upset by the Mounties burning down barns illegally, perhaps he’d make the burning of barns by the Mounties legal. As the great George Jonas commented:
“It seemed not to occur to him that it isn’t wrong to burn down barns because it’s illegal, but it’s illegal to burn down barns because it’s wrong. Like other statist politicians, Mr. Trudeau seemed to think his ability to set out for his country what is legal and illegal also entitled him to set out for his citizens what is right and wrong. He either didn’t see, or resented, that right and wrong are only reflected by the laws, not determined by them.”
This is a distinction all but lost in the decayed Dominion’s political culture. Mr. Brison’s new guidelines are anxious to promote the idea that Adscam happened because the parties involved were not up to speed on what’s legal and illegal. That’s not the problem. It’s that they no longer know what’s right and wrong. I’d wager very few of the vast numbers of Liberal cronies, bagmen and wardheelers were unaware that what they were doing was against the law. And, if they were happy to break the existing laws, giving them three or four more laws to break and a couple dozen more regulations to ignore and 300 more audits to file in the basement is unlikely to change their basic approach to government. And why should it? In a one-party state, they are the law. They rule their fiefdoms: these are, in Alphonso Gagliano’s casually proprietorial phrase, “my crowns.”
The language of the Westminster parliamentary tradition assumes integrity: “my right honourable friend,” “the honourable member” and, in the House of Lords, all that stuff about “the noble earl opposite.” The minute you can no longer assume it, the minute you have to have armies of “ethics commissioners” to put it all down in sub-clauses and appendices, the game is up. Queen Elizabeth I’s reign had the courtly intrigues of the Earl of Essex. Queen Elizabeth II’s has the kabuki “transparency” of 300 earls of ethics. When Liberal hacks drone on about “da Canadian values,” we should know what that boils down to: we now live in a political system where, when dealing with a minister of the Crown, one is obliged to sign a piece of paper undertaking not to offer a bribe to him or accept one therefrom.
The Gomery process represents a rare example of strategic clarity from the famously “perfectly clear” Martin: by tarring the entire political culture, he preserved his own viability within it. I doubt anybody believes the official version--that the minister of finance was apparently unable to see beyond the end of his nose for an entire decade--but those few thousand voters in Ontario who decide federal elections have reacted not with “Boy, those politicians. We really need a change in Ottawa,” but with the traditional pseudo-cynicism of the eternal sucker: “Boy, those politicians. Everybody does it, eh?” And, if everybody does it, why change? The beauty of the Gomery report is that, while it may outline various breaches of this or that guideline or even law, the “meta-story,” as they say, is wholly favourable to the one-party state: as David Warren summed it up, “it confirms the Liberal Party pays for its friends.”
Furthermore, from the point of view of those of us on the right, if the issue is Liberal corruption, we’re unlikely to benefit from any fallout. One notices in conversation with “progressive” friends that they now regard the Liberal party the same way they did the Soviet Union: nothing wrong with Communism, just a few wrinkles putting it into effect; nothing wrong with Liberal party values, just a few wrinkles in the Quebec branch of the promotions department. On that turf, no good will accrue to conservatives, as various NDP poll upticks here and there already indicate. Thus, the magnificent reduction of Canadian politics: the looming showdown in Vancouver Centre between Hedy Fry, the incendiary promoter of bogus Klan scares, and Svend Robinson, the light-fingered gay. Yes, yes, Svend, I know, that characterization is homokleptophobic, but you’ll have to win the election to get it made a new hate crime. A fantasist vs. a kleptocrat is almost too neat a précis of the Canadian political scene, even if, for 100 per cent accuracy, the respective party labels should be reversed.
In the end, people get the government they deserve--as we’ve seen on the news from Paris these last couple of weeks, and before that in the German election. My sense right now is the Grits are heading back to majority territory. C’mon, Ontario, prove me wrong.
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