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Politicizing Canadian Government Programs and Institutions
The programs and institutions of the Government of Canada are funded by taxes from all Canadians, not just those supporting the governing party. Consequently, government programs should serve all Canadians equally. And government institutions, including the civil service, should act in a nonpartisan fashion.
Contrary to this principle, the Harper Government has been subverting the nonpartisan nature of Canadian government programs and institutions.
Consider just the following few examples.
Using Stimulus Spending for Partisan Purposes
Canada was hit with a recession that began in late 2008. Many jobs were lost. The government’s response was to launch a stimulus program that was passed by a majority of the House of Commons, including members of the opposition. If the bill in question had not received a majority, the government would have fallen because it was a budget bill and, therefore, defeat would have indicated non-confidence in the government.
If there was to be any inequality in the distribution of those funds across the country, regions that had been hit hardest by the recession should have been the ones favoured with a higher share of the stimulus dollars, right?
According to the Canadian Press, that is not what happened. Its analysis showed that in six provinces, the areas that received above average stimulus spending had below average unemployment. In three other provinces, above average shares of stimulus spending did go to areas with above average unemployment, but not to the areas with the highest unemployment. The remaining province, Prince Edward Island, has only one economic region as defined by Statistics Canada, so the Canadian Press couldn’t make the same comparisons in PEI.
So, where did the bulk of the stimulus spending go? According to an analysis conducted by the Ottawa Citizen and the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, By the Fall of 2009, Conservative ridings had received 23% more million-dollar-plus projects than the national average per riding. And a Globe and Mail study found that Conservative ridings received an average of $2.1 million in stimulus spending, versus $1.5 million for opposition-held ridings. That’s where the spending went. The numbers suggest it was allocated to advance partisan purposes.
Stuart Thomson, one of the students participating in the 2009 Ottawa Citizen and Halifax Chronicle-Herald study about government stimulus spending, wrote a follow-up article in the Ottawa Citizen a year later. “Clues to the Tories Stimulus Spending “(http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Opinion+Clues+Tories+stimulus+strategy/4296082/story.html ) This time he took a novel approach to appraising how the Conservative government might have distributed funds were they trying to maximize potential votes with that spending of Canadian tax dollars. What he found might be a co-incidence, or not. You be the judge.
The Ontario riding of Vaughan had been a Liberal stronghold. Julian Fantino decided to run in the Fall 2010 Vaughan bi-election after Liberal MP Maurizio Bevilacqua decided to step down to run as Mayor of the City of Vaughan.
Stuart Thomson reasoned that “the fact that a lot of money going to a riding wasn’t necessarily politically advantageous. The same Government of Canada sign went up for a $100,000 project as one that cost $20 million. The best public-relations bang for the (taxpayer) buck would seem to come from a lot of projects that were relatively inexpensive.”
So, Mr. Thomson looked at the numbers of stimulus spending projects initiated in each riding. He wrote: “maybe 30 smaller, $1 million projects were more effective than a single $30 million project. Maybe even 30 times more effective.” The Ontario average was a little more than 20 projects. Adjacent to Vaughan riding, Thornhill and York West were both significantly higher than the provincial average, yet still below 50 projects.
But the riding that Conservative Julian Fantino hoped to capture had received a whopping 136 projects receiving stimulus funds from Canadian taxpayers! Stuart Thomson exclaimed: “That’s 136 billboards for the government. It’s at the top of the list for all of Canada, but that doesn’t even begin to tell the story. It [Vaughan] has 60 more stimulus projects than the second-place riding. It has more than six times the average for Ontario. If you look at the results on a bar graph, Vaughan shoots into the sky, towering above every other riding. It looks not unlike the Toronto skyline, with the bar representing Vaughan mimicking the CN Tower.”
Is that fair to all Canadians? Clearly not. It is an unjust politicization of a program that should have been delivered stimulus spending equitably to all Canadians, regardless of which party they voted for or which riding might deliver the most votes to the Conservatives.
Using Spending Announcements as a Political Prop
Stimulus programs are funded with taxpayer dollars, not Conservative Party funds. If anyone deserves the credit for funding the programs it is the Canadian people and businesses that are paying for them through their taxes.
It appears that the Conservative Party doesn't see things that way. Many of the projects undertaken under the program were announced using much larger than life mock-ups of the cheques that were supposedly used to pay for the projects.
In at least one case, the Government of Canada logo and word-mark logo that normally appears on the top-left corner of government cheques was removed from the mock-up and replaced with the Conservative Party logo. If it was a Conservative Party cheque, shouldn’t the Conservative Party have paid the funds? The Conservative Party didn’t pay. The people and businesses of Canada paid. And we are still paying. This sort of misleading, partisan, action is also in contravention of government rules under the Federal Identity Program.
In a number of other cases, local Conservative MPs announced stimulus projects by displaying mock cheques bearing Conservative Party logos and their own names. The Canadian Ethics Commissioner received “dozens of complaints that Conservative MPs are using taxpayers' money for partisan purposes.”
Did those local MPs or the Conservative Party make good on their signatures and pay for those projects out of their own pockets? No, of course not. You and I -- Canadians -- are paying for those projects. The Conservative Party and its MPs are just trying to take the credit.
Compromising Civil Service Neutrality
The civil service is supposed to serve all Canadians. It has a tradition of political neutrality so as to not give an unfair advantage to the incumbent party. We contend that the Harper government is threatening that neutrality.
For example, in a story about the partisan nature of a Web site that the government set up to promote the stimulus program, the Canadian Press said, “More than one career bureaucrat said they've never seen anything so blatant as the current use of the office [the Privy Council Office (PCO)] for self-promotion.”
Don’t confuse the PCO with the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO). The PCO is supposed to be the non-partisan bureaucratic arm of the PMO.
The Canadian Press article went on to say that no insiders at the PCO would agree to be named out of fear of reprisals. However, one former insider was quoted as saying, “You have a political party that is not constrained by what conventionally would be perceived as overtly partisan actions.”
Note: After complaints began to surface, many of the more blatantly partisan elements of the stimulus program Web site were removed.
Recently, critics have been demanding that the Conservative Party of Canada repay Canadian taxpayers the $45 million spent on what is clearly partisan government advertising.
Politicizing the Justice Ministry
There have been other examples of how the Harper Government is compromising the neutrality of the civil service and government ministries. Consider, for instance, a news release that was posted on the Justice Department’s Web site after Mr. Harper appointed some new senators.
In its original version, the news release was headlined, “NEW SENATORS TO HELP END OPPOSITION OBSTRUCTION OF LAW-AND-ORDER BILLS.” Keep in mind that this was posted on the Justice Department’s Web site. Posted there, it was a message from the Government of Canada and, in particular, the Justice Department. It was not posted as a personal message from the Justice Minister or a message from the Conservative Party.
Liberal MP Marlene Jennings sent a letter to Wayne Wouters, Clerk of the Privy Council and Secretary to the Cabinet, complaining about the partisan nature of the Justice Department’s press release. The release’s headline was subsequently changed to, “MINISTERS WELCOME NEW SENATORS TO HELP SUPPORT LAW-AND-ORDER BILLS.”
Underneath the headline, the revised news release still contained very partisan statements criticizing the opposition parties. However, in fairness, these were published not as statements of the Justice Department, but rather as direct quotes from Rob Nicholson, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, and/or Christian Paradis, Minister of Natural Resources (the post-hoc addition of the quotation marks made it hard to guess to whom the quotes were attributable).
However, on February 23, 2010, Wayne Wouters, Clerk of the Privy Council Office did find merit in the complaint lodged by Liberal MP Marlene Jennings charging that the press release posted on the Department of Justice website was a partisan attack on the opposition. Mr. Wouter’s February 15, 2010, letter to Liberal MP Marlene Jennings stated “It was quickly determined that the news release, in its original form, was not in keeping with government policyJ.” (see: http://www.cbc.ca/politics/insidepolitics/2010/02/justiceministerspinwatch-update-turns-out-that-a-departmental-news-release-can-be-too-partisan-for-w.html }
Politicizing Rights and Democracy
According to its Web site, “Rights & Democracy (International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development), is a non-partisan [emphasis added] organization with an international mandate. It was created by Canada's Parliament in 1988 to encourage and support the universal values of human rights and the promotion of democratic institutions and practices around the world.”
Rights & Democracy did start out as a nonpartisan organization. In fact, despite being created by a Progressive Conservative government under Brian Mulroney, its founding president was Ed Broadbent, a former leader of the NDP. Rights & Democracy continued for most of its existence as a nonpartisan, internationally respected, arms-length organization largely, but not entirely, funded by the Government of Canada. That is to say, it operated as a nonpartisan organization until the Harper Government got its hands on it.
When the Harper Government appointed three new members to Rights & Democracy’s board, rancour quickly ensued. The new board members reputedly tried to shift the policy direction more in line with Conservative Party ideology.
After the new members joined the board, a negative job assessment was written about the then president of Rights & Democracy, Remy Beauregard. However, Mr. Beauregard was not allowed to see the full review. He had to file an Access to Information request to see his own performance review.
After the negative performance review was written, four directors of Rights & Democracy wrote the government to praise the president's abilities.
The night after what was reputedly a particularly vitriolic Rights & Democracy board meeting, Remy Beauregard died of a heart attack. Members of his family have written the Prime Minister to ask for a public inquiry to investigate the circumstances of Mr. Beauregard’s death and what the family members call the "political mayhem" at the agency. See the Toronto Star article of January 12, 2010: http://www.thestar.com/article/749953
After Mr. Beauregard’s death all of the agency's 47 staff members sent a public letter to the chairman of the agency’s board, Aurel Braun, one of the new appointees of the Harper Government. The following sentence was in that letter: "You have lost the confidence of the employees of Rights and Democracy and we unanimously request your immediate resignation." (See: http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=cp_hij2upmo920&show_article=1 )
In addition, over 100 members of Canada’s academic and legal communities wrote a letter to Stephen Harper on January 22, 2010, urging him to “ensure that your Government takes action to correct the situation at Rights and Democracy.” They conclude their letter with this plea: “the unprecedented appeal by staff underscores the depth of discontent with some of the existing board among those charged with carrying out its decisions. Indeed, reports go so far as to raise questions of the professionalism and appropriateness of some conduct. In this context we recommend – if resignations are not forthcoming on their own – that the composition of the board be re-examined with a view to forming an appropriately diverse and balanced body able to ensure the stability of the organization, to promote the pursuit of its mandate as established by Parliament, and to reestablish the confidence of its staff.” (see this document cached at: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:0d5iJ4C-fCMJ:www.rightsanddemocracymovement.org/see-your-comments/80-members-of-canadas-academic-and-legal-communities-write-to-prime-minister+You+have+lost+the+confidence+of+the+employees+of+Rights+and+Democracy+and+we+unanimously+request+your+immediate+resignation.%22&cd=10&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca&client=firefox-a&source=www.google.ca )
For the months following Mr. Beauregard’s death, there appeared to be an effort to tarnish his reputation, especially with the decision, delivered on February 19, 2010, by interim President, Jacques Gauthier that the Board had “engaged Samson Belair/Deloitte & Touche to conduct a forensic audit of the organization's financial transactions from 2005 to 2009.“ (http://www.cnw.ca/en/releases/archive/February2010/19/c3450.html )
Paul Wells, of MacLeans.ca has written extensively on the past year’s strange activities at the Rights & Democracy Board, and in December of 2010, he reported that the Deloitte report “shows what Beauregard’s defenders have long asserted: that the agency [under Beauregard’s tenure] was run without scandal, and without unusually lax management, even before his arrival; that he was taking clear steps to improve its management; and that specific claims against him and his staff from Gauthier and others hold no water. In short, that Rémy Beauregard died while fighting back against an unfounded witch hunt perpetrated by scoundrels who today stand unmasked and humiliated. The government of Canada under Stephen Harper and his minister Lawrence Cannon today continues to support those scoundrels, to its shame and ours as citizens.” http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/12/16/rights-and-democracy-rest-in-peace-remy-beauregard/
In an interview with Mr. Beauregard’s widow, Suzanne Trepanier, aired by the CBC’s The Current on February 15, 2011, it was revealed that Mr. Beauregard was posthumously awarded a raise and two bonuses by the government. Ms. Trepanier recounted her receipt of the notification of the retroactive salary increase and bonuses, but, tearfully, emphasized the fact that the government did not publicly exonerate her husband of the thinly-veiled allegations of financial impropriety. http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/episode/2011/02/15/remys-wake-part-one/
The interference by the Harper government in the operations of the Rights & Democracy Board may well rank high amongst the most blatant examples of formerly non-partisan agencies that were transformed into vehicles for the promotion of the government’s partisan purposes.
