On ethical issues

One of the emerging Con messages lately has been to try to claim that a lack of cabinet resignations or the like makes the Harper government an unusually clean and ethical one. And it looks like even some normally-canny commentators are buying the line so far. So let's take a look at the Cons' real track record to see just how problematic the assertion is.

In the time since Harper' Cons took office, among many other dubious actions by Con cabinet ministers:

- his Finance Minister handed a six-figure, no-bid consulting contract to a political crony in contravention of federal tendering guidelines, which was allowed to slide with nothing more than a promise not to do it again;

- four of his cabinet ministers were named as participants in the Conadscam scheme to evade the spending limits under the Canada Elections Act, with no apparent consequences;

- his Minister of Foreign Affairs and parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Transport altered travel disclosures after the original amounts listed were made public, with no apparent consequences;

- multiple children and other relatives of Con MPs (including cabinet ministers) were found to have been hired by other Cons' offices, with no apparent consequences; and

- his Minister of Fisheries and Oceans used departmental resources for a false partisan attack, with no consequences other than repayment of the billed costs for the press release involved.

Now, it's certainly arguable that the above wouldn't be considered offences deserving of resignation in any event. But the common threads between each of them still send a strong signal that under Harper, being Conservative means never taking responsibility for any wrongdoing. Which hardly bodes well for the assertion that one can equate a lack of resignations with an absence of behaviour which might warrant one.

And indeed, the one exception to the zero-accountability rule only serves to highlight how the Cons have handled misdeeds within their own ranks. Remember what happened when Maxime Bernier actually did resign as Minister of Foreign Affairs over the Couillard scandal:

Mr. Bernier submitted his resignation Monday morning, after learning that his ex, Julie Couillard, had given a potentially damaging interview to the French-language TVA network stating that he was careless with confidential documents.

He was told to wait it out. Still, he was pulled out of meetings throughout the day and was absent from a meeting of the cabinet's priority and planning committee, the cabinet's most important and powerful committee.

The powers-that-be wanted to assess just how bad the interview by Ms. Couillard would be. The waiting game was all about media strategy.

So the Cons have made it clear that in determining whether or not to force a minister's resignation, the only factor they'll take into consideration is political convenience.

But when the Cons are willing to take a wait-and-see approach even when an incident which they strongly suspect might warrant dismissal has already been made public - and in light of the obsessive secrecy imposed by Harper - what are the odds that any incident which did warrant dismissal would be made public? And what incentives would that secrecy tend to create among Harper's cabinet ministers themselves?

Now, it is indeed theoretically possible that Harper's secrecy is serving only to hide just how ethically pure his government is. But Harper has done plenty to create reason to doubt that premise - and there's no reason to give him the benefit of that doubt now.