In a discussion on Power & Politics regarding the WE Imbroglio, Liberal MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith earlier this week suggested that corporate boards often have compliance officers to ensure that they don't find themselves in particular conflicts of interest or other such situations when decisions are made, and that perhaps Cabinet or the PMO needs one as well.  It was a suggestion that I found particularly intriguing, because it seems to make a lot of sense, but is it something that can be made to operate within a parliamentary context?

I reached out to a business school professor about the issue, and was told that a compliance officer would essentially have two different approaches a proactive one, where decisions are vetted ahead of time, with the example of if this company makes an investment, is it compliant with local laws; by contrast, a reactive approach is acting somewhat like the Auditor General in terms of looking over the decisions once they are made.  In this particular context, we would be looking at a proactive model especially seeing as we already have an Auditor General, and we really, really don't need to duplicate her office.  And in the context of the WE Imbroglio, it is quite clear that there wasn't enough of this proactive examination of where potential conflicts of interest may arise (let alone any of the other problems that have since emerged about how WE was planning to run the service grant program, with its kickbacks and suggestions for the kinds of posts that could be created for students).

I was also told that it didn't necessarily need to be a dedicated Compliance Officer, and that there could instead be a "Red Team," which is a borrowed American military term for what they call the enemy army during exercises.  The concept of the "Red Team" is to have a dedicated group in-house whose job is to essentially break things much like a bug tester.  And because this is politics, it could also mean looking at things from the optics perspective, and asking "if the other team was doing this, how would we perceive this."  After all, party leaders have someone who acts as their opponent for debate-prep during an election why would that kind of thinking not be extended to governing as well?  If you had someone in PMO whose job it was to basically play the role of Opposition Leader and keep that perspective in mind, it might cause the government to stop and rethink their plans every now and again.

Of course, there does exist the possibility that someone in PMO is being systematic about these decisions, and this kind of due diligence or best practices are actually taking place, but that this kind of advice is being ignored.  PMO is a bit of a black box, so that's possible, but I would posit is actually unlikely given what we know.  Former Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner Mary Dawson did cite this week that there seems to be a "blind spot" in PMO when it comes to its ethics issues, and you would think that after five years and the third investigation by two successive commissioners that someone would be doubling-down on the challenge function in order to ensure that it doesn't happen again, and yet it keeps happening.

Part of this problem is likely because challenge functions within both the government and the parties themselves have largely been dismantled as leaders centralized their power and authority, often using the excuses of "modernization" or making their organizations more "nimble," and people went along with it.  There is also the problem that the political backrooms have become packed with too many of the same faces who have essentially become staffers for life, perpetuating many of the same problems over and over again because it's become a game to them, rather than bringing in more outside perspectives who may be reluctant to get involved because our post-political ethics rules have become draconian enough that many wouldn't want to deal with the five-year cooling off period that will severely impact the course of their careers.  It's hard to get challenging perspectives when you have the very same Kool-Aid drinkers exercising their groupthink, more focused on how to score points on their opponents than they have with actual good governance.

The other problem that seems particularly unique to the Liberals is the trope of their arrogance that they are so convinced that their intentions are good that they can and should be forgiven for the lapses that inevitably happen.  This goes to the heart of their "blind spot" and is indicative of how they've mishandled their responses, particularly as this whole imbroglio started to unravel, where they said this was really about them thinking about the youth, so that was all that matters.  Fortunately, the prime minister seems to have actually learned something over the past five years and he apologized for what transpired on his second attempt rather than dragging it out and simply justifying what happened with pabulum statements for weeks or even months on end, until the inevitable Ethics Commissioner's report, at which point he would "accept the report," and vow to do better in the future until the next lapse.  It all remains reactive, and not proactive.

So does the PMO need to start thinking about implementing a Compliance Officer or a "Red Team?"  You would think so, but if they are simply drawing from the same pool of loyal staffers or Kool-Aid drinkers, then it clearly won't be as effective as them hiring someone or a team who has a bit of ideological distance, who can take a look outside of the groupthink that permeates the office.  I also don't mean the creation of yet another unaccountable officer of parliament this should be within any PMO as simply best practices, and clearly, this government is in sore need of it.  Unless there is someone in the room who can see the other perspectives, that blind spot will remain unaddressed, and we'll see yet another ethics scandal before we know it.

Photo Credit: National Post