What happened to simply telling the truth?

We didn’t publish anything about the Volkswagen situation in Toronto Star Wheels last week because the story was moving quickly and our business and news departments were doing a fine job keeping readers up-to-date.

And I’m still not going to get into the nitty gritty of this unfortunate situation, other than to say software on some so-called clean diesel cars were programmed to detect when an emissions test was taking place and to then cook the results. I suspect it will be some time before we know the whole story.

But I do want to discuss morality, and what’s happened to it, particularly in North America.

When I first heard about what’s now come to be known as the Volkswagen scandal, I was shattered. Although I am not as convinced as others that the planet is on death row, I believe in the “rule of law,” and the law says that automobile emissions must be restricted to specific levels.

While I was upset to learn that Volkswagen had been caught cheating, it was doubly upsetting to learn that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had known something was not right a whole year earlier, and VW not only did nothing about it then but even suggested that the EPA didn’t know what it was talking about. I just don’t understand that. When you are caught doing something you shouldn’t be doing, why does everybody (it seems) automatically lie about it?

My parents always told me, first, not to do anything stupid or illegal but, second, if indeed caught doing something stupid or illegal, to ’fess up. There might be some hell to pay in the short term but, because of this contrition, it will sooner or later blow over.

If my parents had been mother and father to the world, we would not have had Watergate, Monica Lewinsky, the Quebec sponsorship scandal or the Mike Duffy affair, because people would have told the truth when the jig was up.

And yet these days responses are predictable: it seems to be so much easier to lie and/or try to cover up something than to tell the truth.

In May 2014, Volkswagen was told by the EPA (a California study had originally shown that something was not quite right) to investigate and to fix what it saw originally as a problem. Volkswagen soon reported that it had done both.

In follow-up diagnostic testing, the cars passed. But when they were driven out on the road, they didn’t. That got the EPA really suspicious and they went after VW with a vengeance.

It was then and only then that Volksagen owned up to the existence of the technology that was hidden in the software.

Did Volkswagen really think the EPA was stupid? Did VW really think it could bluff its way through this? Did it not consider that by lying about what it was doing, that it was perhaps making an already bad situation a thousand times worse?

How many illegal cars were sold to unsuspecting drivers by that company in the year — or perhaps even years, as was revealed this week — since it knew it had been caught? How many dealers are getting it in the ear from people who thought the cars they were buying were environmentally sound? How many sales people will lose their jobs because of this disaster?

That’s what upsets me the most: the so-called collateral damage — the hurt experienced by real people — caused by this deception.

The U.S. Congress has already called for hearings. You can bet that the president or CEO of every automobile manufacturer doing business in the United States will be called to testify.

And when they do, and they are asked whether their company is doing anything duplicitous or illegal, how will they respond?

Will they tell the truth, whatever that truth may be? Or will they do what just about everybody else is doing these days, from politicians all the way down to kids in school, and lie through their teeth?

I think I know the answer. And it will shatter me again. nmcdonald@thestar.ca