Watchdog extends, not removes, doubt

Aprivate island set in the cerulean waters of the Caribbean, owned by a reclusive billionaire, approached surreptitiously by luxury helicopter conveying a foreign prime minister and his hand-chosen entourage, all cloaked under a haze of secrecy and bureaucratic bumble-speak.

I think we have here some of the elements of a James Bond movie, absent the salaciously named houris of the Bond franchise. I tell a quieter tale. No giant steel-jawed psychopaths or bowler-hatted assassins in this script. Instead, our dramatis personae comprise a mild-mannered trio: Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, Mary Dawson, the benign Aga Khan, and Canada’s champion frequent-flyer Justin Trudeau. This is a trio of personalities as remote from the thoughts of world conquest as the ability to achieve it.

No one last year begrudged the prime minister’s Yuletide Caribbean sojourn. However, he and his staff turned it into a mystery. It was their cute effort of trying to shield it from all eyes that — as such attempts always will — turned it into a public issue and elevated it to the Opposition’s attention and mortal combat in Question Period. The main item that emerged was, in itself, trivial: the prime minister’s travel on the Aga Khan’s private helicopter to get to the latter’s hideaway private island. It helped that the Aga Khan is a global celebrity and billionaire. That gave the story intrinsic interest. How plutocrats party, and who is on the guest list, is always a welcome tableau in the daily press. Then, too, our own in-house celebrity can claim family friendship with the Aga Khan, and the Canadian government has contributed to the latter’s humanitarian foundation.

But in the particular instance before us, it was neither the glamour factor nor even the family connections that made the stir. It was that ride on the private helicopter. Should Mr. Trudeau have accepted the transport hospitality? In his position, was he allowed to do so?

After some press, and more opposition prodding, the affair was duly set under the Argus-eyed scrutiny of Ms. Dawson, as a matter worthy of her ethical declension. The questions were basic and limited, and, as far as we know, mainly confined to the PM’s use of the Aga Khan’s helicopter. Was that use proper? Were the rules violated? If so, how serious was the violation? Did it entail penalty?

A single trip, one helicopter, a family friend’s island — this is not an intricate affair. Yet, it has been since just after Christmas of last year that Ms. Dawson began the investigation, and the investigation still goes on. A year on and no questions answered. Even as Ms. Dawson finished her term and a new commissioner prepares to take up the trail.

What is the point of this commissioner if, on a matter so limited, so absent any features of complexity, or even abstraction, that a full year passes and “the matter is still under investigation.” This is not the Warren Commission, or even the great comedy of the inquiry into Trump-Russia collusion.

We may summarize the mandate: helicopter — it was all right to use; or helicopter — it was not all right to use. A telephone, an internet search or two, and an office assistant to make the call, and it should be done with in an afternoon.

Ms. Dawson’s other case — the actions of Mr. Bill Morneau — has not quite the same longevity, but is remarkable for another reason. Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner Mary Dawson Her public musings on the finance minister’s actions are teasingly vague. What she has offered on that more tumultuous file is both vague and ambiguous. Paraphrasing: what he did was legal, says the commissioner, but she advised him not to do it. She neither clears him nor condemns him.

What is the point of a parliamentary office that is hesitant, tentative, and equivocal in its rulings and semi-rulings? What is the point of a parliamentary office that leaves a charge over a prime minister’s ethical reputation unsettled for a whole year? Especially on one bearing no marks of complexity in the material to be investigated?

The investigation, in effect, becomes the screen over its own efforts. It presents an inert, passive, incommunicative process — a means of extending doubt, rather than resolving it. While it protractedly continues it provides a shield against learning more, rather than elucidating what is before it. And by doing so, it gives governments an extended stalling space for dealing with the issue.

“I’m co-operating with the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner,” has been the rote non-answer for a year now, whenever someone is under fire in the House. The commissioner’s office serves as a kind of half-alibi. Finally, the office itself deflects responsibility from government in a very wide sense. It off-loads the crucial matter of ethics to a third party. It gives ministers, members and the prime minister an off-ramp for explaining choices and practices for which they bear primary responsibility. It puts judgment of the conduct of House of Commons members “offshore.” The House itself, its members and ministers and the PM, are the authors and judges of ethics and conflict. The commissioner’s office therefore is not only inefficient, it is also an impediment to the very function it was dubiously manufactured to remedy.