Don’t seek privacy in public service

Comment with the law does not lessen his own responsibility for making that choice.

Still, had that been the extent of it — minister takes advantage of loophole, misleads the public, but eventually does what he should have done two years before — that would perhaps be that. It’s what happened in the interim that has landed him in such hot water. For, knowing he was still in possession of his Morneau Shepell shares, the minister introduced legislation that would almost certainly benefit the company, and therefore himself.

Bill C-27 would allow federally regulated employers to provide their workers with so-called “target benefit” pension plans, a product of which Morneau Shepell happens to be a leading provider. As executive chairman of the company, Morneau had himself called for just such a change. Now here he was, as minister, writing it into law. Did he at least recuse himself from discussing the legislation? Asked directly in Parliament, Morneau did not answer.

How on earth the minister — or the ethics commissioner — thought this was appropriate is one of the many questions raised by this affair. Can he have imagined that he had lived up to the commonplace ethical obligation, spelled out in his ministerial mandate letter, to arrange his affairs in a manner that bears “the closest public scrutiny … an obligation that is not fully discharged by simply acting within the law”?

One consequence must surely be to tighten up the gaps in federal conflict of interest legislation: not only with regard to the “direct” vs “indirect” loophole, but even so far as it allows such large and singular holdings to be held in a blind trust. As many others have noted, there is nothing “blind” about it: there cannot be any doubt as to what is in the trust. Better by far to require divestment in such cases, with blind trusts or full disclosure for the rest.

But again: the issue here is not what the law allows, but what the minister did. At the very least, it shows a critical lack of judgment. Worse have been the minister’s responses to criticism of his conduct. Beyond his attempt to pin the blame on the ethics commissioner, there is a consistent thread of annoyance that people are even making an issue of it: it’s a “distraction,” he complains, as if it were nobody’s business but his own what assets he held. Sorry, no: if it’s privacy you want, don’t go into public life.

Morneau was already under fire over the government’s proposed changes to the taxation of small businesses. The controversy was partly his doing — the changes were poorly designed and poorly defended — yet survivable, were the minister otherwise able to command public confidence. The revelation that he has engaged in exactly the kind of sharp practices that the measures are designed to curb — only with more lawyers and a higher net worth — would have shaken that confidence enough.

But after these latest developments, it must be asked of what remaining use he is to the government — a question that may perhaps occur to the prime minister.