Wrong on all counts, McNeil’s remarks are shovel-ready

Auditor general is simply doing his job as defined by the law

Sorry, Premier, you’re wrong. The auditor general isn’t trying to “do” public policy. He merely suggested that your government might articulate some.

Every bit of Premier Stephen McNeil’s reaction to the report from Auditor General Michael Pickup was, as they say in another context, shovel-ready.

Some of the premier’s words betray an antiquated or limited understanding of liberal democracy in the modern parliamentary setting. Others reveal either ignorance of, or an attempt to distort the law that establishes the auditor general’s authority and role.

This week’s report about doctor recruitment, mental health and home care services, cited problems with each, including poor communication of the government’s plans for primary health care.

In response, Premier McNeil repeatedly and erroneously insisted the narrow scope of the auditor general’s job is financial oversight.

Given that he and his thenopposition caucus supported the current Auditor General Act when it became the law, one could have reasonably expected Mr. McNeil to have passing knowledge of what it says and does. Not so.

Section 21 of that Act gives the auditor general authority to “audit the performance” of any “activity, program, process or function” of the government and its multifarious parts, pieces and progeny.

A performance audit – like those covered in the current report – includes “but is not limited to, examination of the governance, economy, efficiency and effectiveness of the auditable entity (the entire government and then some) or any activity, program, process or function of the auditable entity.”

The premier’s suggestion that communications matters are beyond the scope of that law are duplicitous, unless he lacks understanding of provincial law that bears directly on him, his government and how it conducts itself. Tough choices, but what are the others?

Premier McNeil has a case, albeit a losing one, only if communications is not an activity or function of government.

The damage-control cabal – a spin-city of communications functionaries – likely huddled to devise a scheme that retroactively lends at least dubious credibility to the premier’s fatally-flawed utterances.

Their best option is to recreate the world to reflect the premier’s imagined reality.

To achieve that, somebody needs to get busy. “Auditable” entities employ a couple of hundred people whose function is communications activity. It’s going to take a while just to write out all those pink slips.

But no one is getting fired – least of all the auditor general – because communications is and will remain a function of government.

In fact, it is an activity the government does ad infinitum, if not entirely well. As such, it is in the auditor general’s wheelhouse to examine the effectiveness and efficiency of communications anywhere in government.

The auditor general is doing his job as defined by the law, plain and simple. For the premier to suggest otherwise is not merely untrue, it is disrespectful of the very legislature Mr. McNeil purported to champion with his next breath.

But the premier, in his rare defense of the legislative branch, got it wrong.

He did not say that modern parliamentary democracies have evolved to where their governments are expected to be accountable all the time, not just to the dictates of election cycles.

Nor does he appear to recognize that, consistent with that progressive evolution, legislatures have added mechanisms to help them meet their responsibility to hold governments accountable, and the authority of the auditor general is one such mechanism.

The auditor general is an officer of the legislature. He reports to the legislature. His job is to help the legislature hold the government to account. The legislature gave him statutory authority to go where, and examine what the opposition cannot, and the government is legally bound to cooperate in his pursuits.

Only the legislature can fire an auditor general, and that requires, not a simple majority, but twothirds of the votes in the House.

In the spring election, an event the premier exalts as the absolute expression of democracy, voters purged the Liberals of the power to sack the auditor general by reducing their number from 34 seats (two-thirds of the House) to 27.

Further, his contention that voters casting ballots is the pure expression of democracy is counterfactual. Ask voters in North Korea, Syria or Rwanda.

Premier McNeil also seemed convinced that public policy is the exclusive domain of members of the legislature. Where does it say that? Once we elect members to the legislature, are we expected to absent ourselves from all manner of public engagement, discourse or involvement until next called upon to vote?

While reacting to the report, the premier denied he was upset. That may have been a mistake.

Irrational anger could be the only serviceable excuse for his spurious pronouncements.

“Only the legislature can fire an auditor general, and that requires, not a simple majority, but two-thirds of the votes in the House.”