Conflict of Interest

[jsburbidge]

About four years ago, due to a teachers' work-to-rule campaign, I ended up as the chaperone for my daughter and several of her classmates at a WE day event in Toronto. The experience was not, from my point of view, positive: the music was loud and very much not to my taste, and the event was very much like a secular altar call where various minor celebrities went up on stage and talked about their lives and how disability or systemic issues had been barriers for them and how they had overcome them.

(There were ironies in how celebrated the celebrities were, as far as their target audience went. None of my charges recognized the Prince of Wales when a video message - he's a patron of the charity in the UK - kicked off the show, nor did they have any idea of who Henry Winkler was.)

One thing that was readily apparent, though, is that the charity is highly dependent on having a lot of political and media celebrities involved and identified with it. At a lower level, it's also clearly equally dependent on a symbiotic relationship with the low-level government in the form of the school system - semi-official clubs which get members authorized time off for activities, and allowance of formal MeToWe messaging using schools' messaging media.

It's hardly surprising that in a context where it was being considered for the receipt of government monies to run a program there would be conflict of interest, given that the high-profile people it recruits as spokespeople include exactly those at the level of the decision-makers who would be involved in the issue.

Nor is it surprising that, given the pattern of the altar-call testimonies, Margaret Trudeau and Sophie Gregoire Trudeau would have been asked (and at least in one case, paid) to talk about overcoming mental health challenges. The problems are widespread; the prominence of the speakers makes them exact matches to the profile the charity wants.

It's not clear to me that the actual involvement of the various Trudeau family members would violate formal conflict of interest guidelines (payments seem to have been occasional, in the past; they are not continuing employees); and it is not usually considered a conflict of interest if you give money or time to a charity as opposed to receiving benefits (this would be Justin's own connection) - it's hard to work out what the quid pro quo would be, although past donations could be seen as evidence of bias rather than a cause.

(It's less easy to excuse Morneau, because one of his family members is a paid employee. That does violate general formal conflict of interest guidelines.)

It's also, if you look at it in the right way, reasonable that in the context of what was seen as an urgent program, one would not want to go through a formal tendering process with it's attendant delays.

I seriously doubt that there was anything in the least "corrupt" about this particular matter, even if formal guidelines (beyond the Morneau matter) were breached. But the guidelines generally exist to prevent not only corrupt but overly "cozy" dealing. (That's why all those tendering rules exist: even when you're pretty sure that the organization which will get the contract for providing education services on army bases will be the same one that got it last time, the contract is put out to tender. It enforces arm's-length dealing.)

When you put the whole thing together, though, it certainly reinforces the impression that Trudeau is not very bright. He could have avoided most of this by delegating the decision-making to a cabinet subgroup with no links to the charity, once it became evident that it was a candidate for the rôle. And having a clear (public, or at least publishable) paper trail showing how the recommendations to (1) use a private partner instead of the civil service, and (2) settle on that particular partner, arose - and from an independent source - would also be something a bright leader might ensure.

This is not new news, however depressing its status as the same thing, all over again, is.

Comments

[graydon]

I can sympathize with that!

There was an analysis floating around today that the US has a bipartisan consensus on overseas military intervention because it's a status apportioning mechanism for their imperial elite. Seems entirely plausible.

Canada is sort of an imperial remnant, structurally; not quite an empire as such but with a lot of the problems associated with moving an established imperial establishment off a local maximum. (Severely exacerbated in this case by the degree of compulsion, the extent of the culpability for the disaster, and the mammonites; they've managed to cripple everybody's repertoire of possibility pretty thoroughly these last couple generations.) (and having gone first for once; Harper thoroughly expended all existing stocks of Canadian goodwill, standing, Pearson's diplomatic legacy, etc.)

So, anyway -- moving off the status quo means the whole thing attacks you. Moving off the status quo means you've got to survive the US response. Moving off the status quo means accepting responsibility to do to mammonite cultural transmission what happened to the Cathars. It's a big job and nobody has the conceptual framework to imagine that it's preferable IF they've managed to become even a peripheral part of the existing establishment.

(And our media environment and degree of overwatch means it's really hard to get philosophical alternatives circulating; anything that starts getting taken seriously gets drowned, more than it gets countered, but it does get drowned.)

[jsburbidge]

By my reading, really cynical and pragmatic Liberals would already be putting a lot of emphasis on extra-Green bona fides and be distancing themselves from carbon supporting measures of any sort. They have no more seats to lose in the west and might pick up some swing seats in urban areas.

Likewise in Covid-19 measures. Sounding as though they're thinking more than six months ahead should play well with their core and core-adjacent voters.

And holding serious-looking consultations gives them cover if they actually do think at some point that they need to shore up the longer-term economy with structural changes.

I wouldn't expect "radical" measures from them - they are, after all, the party of the status quo. Just more "proactive" ones.

(My other recommendation was, and is, that they should have a change of leadership Real Soon Now. Against the current PCs and Singh, they don't need charisma, they need gravitas.)

Real change will be driven by facts in the ground. Enough people may very well be hurt badly enough that this no longer looks like a local maximum. I'm a poor one to judge; I haven't been hurt financially by the past several months and I'm asocial enough that the relative restriction in social contacts with WFH is probably a small net benefit for me, rather than the stress-inducing thing it seems to be to others.

[graydon]

Well, sure, but the downside is that it's a commitment to abandon the status quo. Pretty much all the everything sits on fossil carbon. Very difficult to get the party of the status quo to do that; someone with a lot of leadership skills could, you just pretend that the new thing has been the status quo all along, but that's not who we have in the Federal Liberal party.

I can't think of a single person in Canadian federal politics with meaningful gravitas.

I don't think COVID-19 is going to move the perception of the local maximum; I think the severe food shortages in the middle of this decade might. If the Arctic amplification folks are correct, it's already substantially too late for a smooth landing with respect to the food situation. Getting to a crash some of us walk away from ought to be an every-nerve-and-sinew effort.