A very bad week for people who trust government

Canada, for all its faults, remains by most standards — certainly in comparison to many other countries on this planet — a high-functioning and reasonably well-governed democracy. But you can hardly blame those who think otherwise. Just look at the headlines this week.

On Parliament Hill, a Liberal government that claims to be terribly concerned about misinformation — and wants to regulate the internet to make it better — is either lying to fend off criticism of its latest gun-control push, or it has no idea what it’s doing. Even as it insists it is not going after hunting rifles and shotguns, it is clearly going after hunting rifles and shotguns.

As the National Post’s Tristin Hopper explained this week, those guns include several wooden, single-action weapons unambiguously designed for hunting. (My favourite on the list is the “Webley & amp;amp; (sic) Scott Wild Fowl Gun,” which suggests a rush copy-and-paste job from some other list that no one bothered to proofread.)

Firearms issues can be difficult to comprehend for the majority of Canadians (myself included) who don’t have intimate experience with them. Liberal strategists know that, generally focusing on guns that look

scary to the untrained eye and using undefined terms like “military-style assault weapons” to support their agenda.

This time around, however, they’ve managed to propose banning several weapons that aren’t scary looking at all, that fit nobody’s definition of “military style,” and that are clearly designed for hunting deer, ducks and farmland vermin. When pressed, naturally, the Liberals accuse their critics of lying.

“The government has ... no intention whatsoever to go after long guns and hunting rifles,” Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino said Monday. “This is simply Conservative fearmongering.”

Down the road at Ottawa City Hall, meanwhile, Tuesday saw the sudden resignation of longtime city manager Steve Kanellakos. He followed out the door threeterm mayor Jim Watson, who did not run for re-election, and former OC Transpo boss Steve Manconi, who retired last year.

“I’m sure there will be speculation about the reasons for my departure at this time,” Kanellakos said — and so there was, but not for long. On Wednesday, Justice William Hourigan issued his report into Ottawa’s fantastically dysfunctional new LRT line. That’s the one with the wheels that won’t stay round, the trains that won’t stay on the track, the doors that work on their own terms and the unmistakable stench of human sewage pervading Parliament — no joke, Parliament — station.

Hourigan’s findings, if anything, were more scathing than expected. Basically Watson, Kanellakos, Manconi and some senior staffers were managing the entire project behind the scenes in a Whatsapp group as a desperate exercise in political crisis-management rather than transit-building. (Goodness knows what they thought the end game was.) Project standards and goalposts were changed to ensure good results, including those during the all-important trial-running phase of the LRT opening. Keeping city council in the dark was crucial.

Kanellakos made a “deliberate effort ... to mislead council on the decision to lower the testing criteria and on the testing results,” Hourigan found. “(Watson) had accurate information about trial running and the decision to change the testing criteria, but failed to provide that information to council,” he added. All this “irreparably compromised the statutory oversight function of Council” and amounted to “egregious violations of the public trust,” Hourigan found.

“Because the conduct was wilful and deliberate, it leads to serious concerns about the good faith of senior city staff and raises questions about where their loyalties lie. It is difficult to imagine the successful completion of any significant project while these attitudes prevail.”

Stage 2 of Ottawa’s LRT project is currently underway.

Down the highway in the provincial capital, meanwhile, Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister Steve Clark was asked this week whether he had tipped off developers about parcels of currently protected Greenbelt land being released for homebuilding. This came after media discovered developers, including donors to the Ontario PC party, had purchased land at prices and on terms that didn’t seem to make sense unless they knew in advance they could be developed.

Astonishingly, at first, Clark seemed to think stonewalling and equivocal answers would do. “I meet with people who want to build housing, whether they’re Habitat for Humanity, whether they’re Ontario Aboriginal Housing Services, whether they’re a private home builder that builds one home a year or 1,000 homes,” he told reporters.

By Wednesday, he seemed to realize these allegations concern the most basic form of political corruption there is — the real-estate version of insider trading, basically — and finally got around to denying any special treatment had been offered. He said he would welcome an investigation from the provincial integrity commissioner.

His initial stance might seem more extraordinary if, back in Ottawa, the federal Liberals didn’t think the same sort of waffle would make allegations of Chinese interference in the 2019 and 2021 elections go away. “I can reassure ... all Canadians that (these) elections were not interfered with in a way that would significantly change the results of the election,” Trudeau blithely said during Tuesday’s question period. No normal person would derive any reassurance from that.

At least at Ottawa City Hall, the villains seemed to sense when the jig was up and it was time to beetle toward the exits. Once politicians themselves become oblivious to where genuine scandal lies, there’s no telling what democratic indignities might await us.