DUTIES ARE A CHORE — BUT THAT’S NOT THE PUBLIC’S PROBLEM
Clarkson seeks payment for what many do freely
On Saturday, former governor general Adrienne Clarkson wrote a piece defending herself against a story published a few days before in the National Post.
It might as well have been headlined, “I am entitled to my entitlements,” à la David Dingwall, the former Liberal cabinet minister who went on to become the CEO of the Royal Mint (in which capacity, defending his expenses before a parliamentary committee, he uttered the line that made him infamous) and who is now the president of Cape Breton University, proving only that while the rich get richer, the appointed get appointed again.
Clarkson’s rebuttal appeared in the Globe and Mail, which is interesting because when reporter Brian Platt wrote the original story, just a few days before, he was told by Clarkson’s office that a) her expenses were “a private matter” and b) she was on a weeks-long trip to Europe.
Platt’s story was a straightforward accounting of Clarkson’s lavish and continuing use of public funds since she left office in 2005 — $1.6 million thus far in government pension, $1.1 million in mysterious expenses and $3 million in a start-up grant to cement her legacy project.
This is the Institute for Canadian Citizenship which, by chance, features among other highlights the Adrienne Clarkson Prize for Global Citizenship, her partner John Ralston Saul’s baby, the Lafontaine-Baldwin Lectures (Clarkson gave the lecture in 2007), and a variety of undoubtedly amusing salons showcasing themselves and their friends in public conversation about big issues.
In fact, one of the Institute’s salons, under the 6 Degrees banner, is in Berlin next week, featuring “a global conversation on citizenship and inclusion,” with speakers such as, yes, John Ralston Saul and, by God, Adrienne Clarkson.
(I presume since Clarkson was also a CBC journalist for three decades, she may also have a Mother Corp. pension, and perhaps even an Ontario government one, for her five years as agent-general for Ontario in France. See the appointed get appointed again, above.)
In any case, her defence for the rather ferocious way she has latched onto the public teat, matching even a seasoned practitioner like Senator Mike Duffy, is that a) these are her entitlements, nothing more than her following “the instructions from the Office of the Secretary to the Governor-General,” and b) this is the burden of a former GG.
It is in this latter area where she confuses real life with her specialness as a former GG.
Why, she wrote in her own defence, “Last year, I fulfilled 182 commitments, many of them public events”; “I gave 16 speeches” with no fees and “10 pieces of writing for no fee”; “Each year, I receive between 500 and 700 requests and invitations …” and “dozens of invitations to public appearances …”
Cry me a river, honey: But for the pension, the staff, the expenses and the start-up legacy money, that’s the life of anyone who is remotely a public figure. I’m giving two speeches, for no fee, next week; these are, to use Clarkson’s language, invitations received in my capacity as a journalist, but I don’t seek expenses from the newspaper or anyone else.
In fact, this is life, period — commitments, requests for time and money, invites to things, obligations at every turn, small duties and big ones, debts owed, responsibilities assumed. Managing it, saying yes or no, reading email you don’t solicit, showing up when you’d rather stay comatose on the couch — this is all of our lives. Every one of us does it. We just don’t expect the taxpayer to pay for it, nor do we consider it, somehow, to be public service.
Clarkson was an able governor general, particularly in her embrace of the Canadian Forces, as far as governors general go — and this is not far. It is mostly a ceremonial role, not a substantive one.
She was also a high-maintenance GG: Let no one forget her circumpolar tour of Russia, Iceland and Finland, for 50 or so of her friends, which was supposed to cost $1 million but ended up more than five times that, at $5.3 million. It was such an embarrassing extravagance that the government cancelled the Part 2, which called for visits to yet more northern countries.
The former GG’s “reimbursement program,” as the gig is called, was started in 1979 during then-governor general Ed Schreyer’s time, with guidelines introduced under governor general David Johnston in 2012.
It remains today as opaque a cost as it was then.
All that is known is that only Clarkson has been regularly billing more than $100,000 a year in expenses (with the exception of three years following the first report of her entitlements, in 2011, in the Toronto Star report).
So she is being cute when she says, “The financial support I’ve received is in line with what was extended to my predecessors, and has been to my successors …” Nope: She has been at the trough the most.
In fact, Platt and colleague Marie-Danielle Smith have since confirmed that Clarkson has often actually filed about $200,000 a year in expenses, and that she has been a staunch opponent of reform.
I am happy that Clarkson, as she wrote in the Globe, “pledged herself to the Canadian people as long as I lived,” but she no longer works for us, and we ought not to be saddled with her costs, or those of any other governor general, for life.
She is almost 80 years old, she wrote. High time to pay for stuff herself.
IT REMAINS TODAY AS OPAQUE A COST AS IT WAS THEN.