This week's revelations from finance minister Bill Morneau regarding his travels on WE Charity's dime should be the death knell of his ministerial career. For as nice of a guy as Morneau seems to be, and for as competent as his management of the finance portfolio has been (so long as you don't count his inability to communicate what he's doing), it has become extremely clear as the WE Imbroglio continues to unfold and pick up steam that there are problems in the leadership culture of the Liberals, which threaten the governance of the country if allowed to carry on. We have reached the point where both Justin Trudeau and Bill Morneau are becoming bigger liabilities than they are assets to the party, and it should be time to start thinking about "spending more time with family."
To be clear, this isn't solely about the WE Charity contribution agreement for the student grant program and how that happened. Based on the testimonies of senior bureaucrats, I'm reasonably convinced there was no conspiracy in the PMO to invent a programme solely for WE's benefit, but it's what happened next that is indicative of where the problem lies. This isn't something that Bardish Chagger needs to fall on her sword over she did her job in taking the advice given to her by the civil service (which was itself based on haste and a lack of capacity due to the pandemic) and bringing it to Cabinet. It's the fact that neither Trudeau nor Morneau gave any second thought as to their ethical obligations or the rules around their own conduct like it was their responsibility to do, and that this is an ongoing pattern of behaviour.
While the line is often spouted that Liberals don't think the rules apply to them, I'm not sure that's quite right. Rather, I think it's a culture that they are blind to their own actions and the reasoning behind their convictions precisely because they are convinced of the rightness of their actions. This blindness turns into a culture where the ends justify the means that it's fine if they break the rules and apologize for it later because they are trying to do what's right. It's for the youth, so that's what matters not the conflicts of interest that entangled them along the way. And this blindness has become a problem because it keeps tripping them up, and they keep excusing it because they truly believe that they are on the side of the angels.
Looking back over the past five years, I am starting to wonder if Morneau and Trudeau both have treated their respective jobs like they were on the board of a philanthropic organization rather than the Cabinet of a G7 nation. There is an attitude that this is the public service that they sign up for as a result of being rich and connected and it's those connections that leads into the culture of coziness that permeates this PMO's actions. The Canadian establishment is a very small place, and that contributes to the blindness to why the ethics rules matter again, because they are convinced of the rightness of their actions, and that they know the right people to do the job, so therefore the ends will justify the means. But that can't keep happening in government.
To an extent, the ethical scandals of this government, as minor as many of them have been, are a result of the fact that Trudeau and Morneau continue to operate as though they're in the business or philanthropy worlds, which can't be how they work in government. It again goes to the blindness to the rules that exist to govern these relationships because they're not used to having to account for them but it's also about how that blindness has emboldened some of the actors around them, particularly in Morneau's office where it was his staffers who largely badgered Jody Wilson-Raybould over SNC-Lavalin, and who let SNC stage-manage the drafting of the deferred prosecution agreement legislation, and ensuring that it went into a budget implementation bill rather than a justice bill. Those same staffers also appeared to be the ones who suggested that the government give themselves unconstitutional powers over taxation changes without bringing them to Parliament at the start of the pandemic. This is a patterned that Morneau as minister should have done something about.
The hubris that surrounds this culture that surrounds Trudeau and Morneau is also what has led to the fact that there are no dissenting voices around the PMO, such as a "compliance officer" or "red team" after all, their conviction in their rightness means that their ideas must be the correct ones, and once again, if things screw up along the way, or if rules get broken, well, the virtuous ends will justify the means. And this is what is corroding the brand for the Liberals right now, and more voices in the party are waking up to this, even if they're not being outwardly critical, but this may be the time to recognize that for the sake of the party and the government that it is time for Trudeau and Morneau to consider a graceful exit.
And while there are certainly arguments against changing horses in mid-stream, given the pandemic and the economic recovery, it needs to be recognized that there are problems, and that the way to solve them means a change at the top. That can happen gracefully if there are strict timelines around a process that doesn't become a three-ring circus or five-alarm clown show where every megalomaniac lawyer in the country thinks this is a presidential primary that they can swoop into with zero political experience and suddenly lead the country. While I'd prefer caucus selection meaning a straight-up contest between Chrystia Freeland and François-Philippe Champagne the party brass may come up with a creative solution that limits their current "supporter"-driven process from devolving into spectacle. But the time to act is now, to staunch the bleeding, and to show that the party realizes there are problems they need to change. If instead Trudeau and Morneau decide to just ride it out, the long-term damage both to party and government will continue to accumulate, and what follows will be so much worse for the country as a whole.
Photo Credit: CBC News
