Glib answers won’t do
Justin Trudeau is no doubt right that opposition members of the House of Commons ethics committee, who want the prime minister to testify before them about his illegal trip to the Aga Khan’s private island, are motivated at least in part by the impure desire to prolong this political scandal.
Liberal members of the committee voted the idea down on Tuesday, as their opposition colleagues surely knew they would. And Trudeau dismissed the gambit as pure political theatre. But in fact the proposal is not a bad one. Trudeau is the first prime minister ever found to be in violation of the conflict-of-interest law. If this does not warrant an extraordinary meeting of the House ethics committee, we can’t imagine what would.
The opposition’s call has particular appeal given Trudeau’s inadequate response so far to the ethics commissioner’s damning December ruling, which found the prime minister’s yuletide getaway violated four provisions of the conflict-ofinterest law.
By accepting the hospitality of the Aga Khan, a registered lobbyist, and then failing to recuse himself from decisions related to the spiritual leader’s interests, Trudeau broke the law and undermined the public trust. Yet in the weeks since the decision, Trudeau’s tone on the matter has shifted troublingly from contrite to brittle to robotic.
Asked in a recent scrum how he could have thought the vacation was a good idea, Trudeau paused for a long time before offering this: “We work with the conflict-of-interest commissioner on a regular basis on a broad range of issues when the issues come up. On this issue of a family vacation with a personal friend, it wasn’t considered that there would be an issue there.”
Huh? “It wasn’t considered that”? The passive voice suggests the decision belonged to someone other than himself, yet the prime minister cannot outsource his ethical judgment. Moreover, the answer skirts the question. Why wasn’t “it considered that”? Well before the ethics commissioner delivered her ruling, the public seemed to understand that the prime minister had failed in his ethical obligations. He should have known better.
Finally, Trudeau’s answer gives no sense of a lesson learned. The prime minister must make absolutely clear to the public that, indeed, he should have known better — and would know better should the question ever arise again.
As it is, that’s not at all clear. Insofar as Trudeau has explained his ethical lapse at all, he has focused on his belief, technically mistaken, that the Aga Khan is an old family friend. The ethics commissioner’s ruling turned in part on her rejection of this claim. But while this semantic question may be at the heart of the legal ruling, it seems peripheral to the ethical dilemma at play. Should the prime minister really be accepting gifts from a lobbyist, even if that lobbyist is his friend?
We need clarity on where Trudeau stands on such questions. The prime minister says he will address Canadians’ concerns during a series of town hall meetings now underway. But while his commitment to public transparency is laudable, it is no replacement for the parliamentary accountability that is a cornerstone of our democratic system. Sooner or later he will have to submit to opposition grilling. Sooner is better.
As trust in government declines, so, too, does tolerance for anything that looks like entitlement or corruption. The public trust depends not only on integrity, but also on the appearance of integrity. When Trudeau’s government defends unseemly cash-for-access fundraisers for too long, when his finance minister doesn’t adequately distance himself from his own finances, when the prime minister breaks the conflict-of-interest law and fails to take responsibility, it gives ammunition to those who would use any pretext to attack government.
The way Parliament responds to ethical breaches can further erode trust or help to rebuild it. When the opposition does get the chance to question the prime minister, they should do all they can to suppress the inevitable urge to gloat or needle and instead surprise us by asking substantive questions about our conflict-of-interest law and the prime minister’s understanding of his ethical obligations. The stakes are too high for point-scoring. And too high by far for the prime minister to keep offering glib dismissals in the hopes this goes away.
Sooner or later Justin Trudeau will have to submit to opposition grilling on his violations of the conflict-of-interest law. Sooner is better