Conflict of Interest

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.