CKNW Editorial
for April 2, 2001

There is nothing new about crooked politics … especially there is nothing new about pork barrel politics. But that doesn’t make it acceptable. Politicians reward pals … that has gone on forever although the Brits have come up with a better system of awarding honours … they have three categories. The first is the appointments by the government. Usually some lolly into party coffers will get you anything from an OBE to an appointment to the House of Lords. Then there are some, but fewer honours set aside for the opposition parties. This is, you see, an improvement over the system developed by David Lloyd George where it was so much for a knighthood, so much for a baronetcy and so on but only for donations to the governing party. The problem with his system is that since only government pals got to share that made the other parties complain. Much better to have a quiet little conspiracy amongs all parties for once it was decided to give everyone a chance to share in the goodies, the immorality was evidently taken out of the system.

Then there is the person who genuinely ought to be recognized by the state.

We have also have three tiers to our system. Orders of Canada are often awarded by political fiat but unlike the British system, only the government gets to do the naming. This is, of course, vehemently denied by the government but the jig was up when journalist Mike Duffy, slagged by Frank Magazine ‘fessed up that this had so upset the Prime Minister that he wouldn’t be able to surprise his Mom with the OC he was due to get.

Then there are good souls in communities that, after much politicking by prominent people in the community nearly always fortified by a government MP or senator, get passed always to the lowest order, the member. Then there are the prominent people, politicians, labour leaders, party bagmen who have usually done good things like be on a city council and there is only one requirement for them – they must never, ever, have stepped outside the establishment’s accepted boundaries of dissent. This is why Mel Smith was never honoured and why Gordon Gibson will be. This sort of recognition comes after a furious campaign on behalf of the candidate and the Companions believe that it would look good if a dissenter, always a polite one of course, got one of those glorified Rotary pins to wear.

I raise all this because it is what I call the soft corruption of government. It is the grease that keeps some of the wheels turning.

But the corruption in this country, especially at the national level is much greater. The Prime Minister’s enormous largesse in and around his own riding is but one example. Never mind Shawinigate, millions have found their way into pals of the prime minister’s pockets. And it goes to the very top too – look at the money given Bombardier over the years as grants and low interest loans. This is the largest corporate pal of the Liberal Party and the excuse given is that the company has been a huge international success. I guess it has, given the slush it’s received.

It comes in more subtle forms too, of course. There are plums like Chairs of Crown Corporations. These leeches do no real work – they are not, the gods be praised, mandated to have any say in the real running of the show. All they get are lush offices, first class travel, a large annual stipend and often pension benefits. Usually these parasites are given long term appointments so that any new government must shell out bundles of tax dollars to get rid of them. But it’s often more subtle than that. Neither the federal government nor our own provincial government has any idea how many crown corps or their subsidiaries exist. Yet many of them have politically appointed boards of directors and chairpersons that get annual stipends or per diems for doing very little benefit to the public.

As I say, this is hardly new. What is new is that the public has, at long last, awoken from its torpor and started to ask questions and even, on occasion, to criticize their political masters.

The effect of all this has been devastating on our political life. The politician who was once seen as an important and admirable person, often even by his political opponents, is now seen as an object of derision protected wherever he goes with a cadre of political hacks who carefully polish his every utterance. And decent people like Stephen Owen and Ted McWhinney are caught up in it. What the party says goes and what the leader says is law for the party. Honest men and women, drawn into a dirty game where they must obey are, not unnaturally, tarred with the leader’s brush. They may not be on the take themselves and they may not have had anything to do with the corruption around them but they are taken to be part of an overall conspiracy by their leader to rule by executive fiat supported by bought-off lackeys.

It’s little wonder that decent people are put off politics. Think of what happens to all of them. The moment they enter the House, be it Ottawa or a provincial capital, they are bound to do not what their conscience dictates or what their constituents think is right, but by what the boss says he wants. Even the notion of some sort of democracy within cabinet or caucus should be taken with great care since when it comes to the crunch, which it usually does, the leader prevails and the member is left with the choice of going along or becoming an outcast.

And this, I guess, brings me to my point. When you have systems of government where one man dictatorships prevail, you get rot. And the rot comes from the top down and reaches into every nook and cranny of how we are governed.

And it costs taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars every year.

And, worst of all, new governments don’t change the system, only the beneficiaries.