On foot-dragging

Jeff points out Greg Weston's column on the Cons' delays in bringing substantial parts of the Accountability Act into force. But as noted by Weston, it isn't just Canada Post that's being kept free from promised accountability by the Cons' delay tactics:

Left out of all the fanfare was the fact that eight key sections of the act come into force only when the federal cabinet (read: Harper) decrees it to be so. And no one we can find in government seems in much of a hurry to get that job done...

(T)he new access-to-information overhaul isn't the only change in the new accountability act the Conservatives might rather see later than sooner.

All the new measures intended to protect government whistleblowers, for instance, have yet to be enacted.

Given the Harper administration is already conducting at least four separate witch-hunts, um, investigations, into leaks of embarrassing poop on the Conservatives, it is hard to imagine the PM rushing to encourage even more whistleblowers.

Ditto for the implementation of tougher conflict-of-interest rules for those in public office, and the appointment of a new independent ethics commissioner, for the first time reporting to Parliament and not under the thumb of the PM.

If anything, there might be reason to hold off on the Access to Information provisions unti the Cons finally get around to the more thorough review which was claimed as the reason for cutting the PMO and Cabinet out of the Accountability Act's provisions in the first place. After all, if there's going to be continued delay on access to information, then it only makes sense to deal with all those provisions as a package rather than letting the Cabinet provisions slip out of the public eye.

But it's a different story when it comes to holding MPs to an appropriate ethical standard and doing everything possible to protect whistleblowers. There's absolutely no reason for any delay - and indeed, there shouldn't be any risk to the Cons in proclaiming the provisions in force if they've kept their promise to follow the Accountability Act from the moment they took power.

(pause for laughter)

In reality, there's every reason to think that the Cons have no more played by the Accountability Act's rules than the previous ones. Which means that the Cons will be happy to avoid enacting their promised reforms as long as the risk in exposing their own actions to scrutiny appears greater than the risk of being called out on yet another broken promise and example of PMS' unnecessary secrecy. And it'll be up to the media and the opposition parties to tilt that equation in favour of action by asking just what Harper feels the need to hide.