Villa controversy couldn’t have come at a worse time

The revelation that Bill Morneau failed to disclose to the federal ethics watchdog one of his private corporations – a company that, in a dreadful bit of optics, owns a villa in the south of France – could not have come at a worse time for the embattled finance minister or his government’s foundering project of tax fairness.

Just when it seemed that Morneau could not be any less credible a salesman of Ottawa’s proposed small-business tax reforms, CBC News revealed that for two years, whether through inadvertence or something worse, the finance minister effectively kept secret a holding that provides his family significant tax advantages.

This news surely will not soothe the incorporated professionals who are understandably confused about why they, of all possible targets, have been selected as the first front in the push for tax fairness.

Rather, it feeds the narrative being proffered by federal Conservatives that there is something hypocritical about Morneau going after doctors and farmers rather than, say, large publicly traded companies like Morneau Shepell, the human-resources firm that the minister once ran.

In an attempt to get the largely sensible package of reforms back on track, Morneau was expected to announce a number of needed tweaks on Monday. But whatever good this does will no doubt be undermined in part by stories of the minister’s undisclosed company, its villa in Provence and the inheritance tax benefits they provide. As ever with this debacle, Morneau has made his important job much harder than it needed to be.

But the implications of this revelation go beyond the fate of the current package of reforms. Whether this was an ethical lapse or a more mundane oversight, whether Morneau sought to dodge his obligations or he simply holds so many companies that he’s unable to remember them all, this story feeds the lingering sense that this government is increasingly out of touch with ordinary Canadians.

As trust in government declines, so, too, does tolerance for anything that looks like entitlement or corruption. The public trust depends not only on integrity, but also on the appearance of integrity. This is particularly important at a moment when, by necessity, the government is looking to close unfair and ineffective tax loopholes and thus ask certain people to pay more. Yet the Trudeau government has been consistently careless on such matters. Remember when Trudeau failed to grasp the optics of taking a government jet to the Aga Khan’s private island for a family holiday last winter? Or why the government was so slow to realize that its cash-foraccess fundraisers created the damaging appearance of privileged access.

This insensitivity is not simply a political problem. The resurrection of old questions about Liberal entitlement is dangerous not only for the party, but also for the country. For the essential project of tax reform to succeed, and indeed for government to be a force for good, Ottawa must seem to be worthy of the public trust.

When, on the other hand, more and more ordinary citizens come to feel their elected officials are out of touch with their concerns, tax reform is all but doomed, democracy is corroded and, as we have been reminded in recent years, demagoguery is nourished.

As Morneau fumbles, the stakes are truly high.