Liberals preside over a mushroom patch

Lack of response from government about AG report says a lot

The proverb says half a loaf is better than none, but in the search for truth half a story is generally unsatisfying and frequently unfair. This week, Nova Scotians got the bad news about three badly-run government operations, so you’d expect the Liberals to be champing at the bit to tell their side of the story. You’d be wrong.

The Liberal majority on the public accounts committee frustrated opposition attempts to call senior bureaucrats from the departments that came under the critical glare of Auditor General Michael Pickup.

When it comes to the careless operation of provincial jails, poor enforcement of child maintenance and blithe oversight of millions in grant money, there’s bad news and there’s no news.

The bureaucrats would be on their way to the committee with the good news, if only they had some. They are not, so the plausible explanation for the auditor’s lengthy tale of woe, on these three files anyway, is that Nova Scotia is saddled with the thing it can afford least – lousy government.

The auditor general is practiced at finding what’s wrong but doesn’t offer much in the way of judgement on why things have gone that way. That’s where an explanation from departmental officials would come in handy, but it’s not going to happen anytime soon.

The government’s political strategy is selfevident and by now as comfortable to Nova Scotia’s Liberals as stepping into an old pair of slippers.

They take their day of political grief – in this case an auditor general’s report that says, to paraphrase, these guys couldn’t run a two-float parade – and shut down all subsequent efforts to get to the bottom of the story where Nova Scotians might discover more inefficiency, venality, duplicity or hoodwinkery.

The government argues that it accepted the auditor general’s recommendations and will fix the problems he identified. What more is there to say?

Well, shouldn’t somebody explain why people are hired to work in jails without undergoing rudimentary background or even reference checks? Is there political influence in hiring, bureaucratic cronyism, or just a cavalier disregard for due diligence?

Can’t anyone tell us why 80 per cent of outstanding child maintenance payments aren’t addressed in a timely manner? The kids apparently can wait while the government dithers.

And what about that $45 million in “small” grants the province doled out but didn’t follow up to see if the money was doing any good? Is the government that squeezed Nova Scotia white to balance the budget now writing cheques on a wing and a prayer, or are politics at play there, too?

The government’s designated apologist on the public accounts committee, Gordon Wilson (L-Clare Digby) says he doesn’t have any questions for the officials who run these programs. Maybe he has the answers to those posed above or, more likely, he knows that the answers will do the government more harm than good.

When Pictou East Tory and leadership contender Tim Houston suggested partisan politics may be dictating the committee’s agenda, Wilson took umbrage. The Boston Strangler pleaded not guilty, too.

Nova Scotians will have to settle for half of the story because the government doesn’t want them to know the whole story and, as always, half a story is unfair, this time to the taxpayers who foot the bills.

It is much easier to govern and get re-elected when you keep tight control over the flow of information.

It’s been an unusually sunny spring in Nova Scotia, but very little of it shines into the dark corners of the government because these Liberals prefer to preside over a mushroom patch than risk going out into a bright field of clover.

The Liberals effectively shut down any public examination of officials who could shed light on the so-called security breach that resulted in one innocent family being treated like the Capone gang, while the government crowed about its role in nabbing a criminal mastermind. Turned out there was no crime and certainly no mastermind inside the government or out.

Now, the government has given itself a free pass on running shoddy jails, letting child maintenance payments lapse and handing out grant money without checking on the results.

Nova Scotians pay for a full loaf but are settling for half and if that continues, sooner or later there will be no loaf at all.