On quickly-broken promises

Predictably, the Cons are splitting hairs in an effort to allow their former staffers to lobby the new government. And one of the groups which backed the Cons during the election campaign is less than happy with the semantics:

Mr. Harper came to power promising to enact strict ethics rules, including a five-year cooling-off period before ministers, ministerial staffers and senior officials can start lobbying the government. Last November, he pledged that a new Accountability Act will be his government's first legislation.

"If there are Hill staffers who dream of making it rich trying to lobby a future Conservative government, if that's true of any of you, you had better make different plans, or leave," Mr. Harper said then.

Those restrictions apply only to minister's aides, however, and not to aides to backbench MPs, so those who worked for the Tories in opposition are not hampered by them...

Duff Conacher, co-ordinator for the ethics watchdog Democracy Watch, said the cooling-off period should apply to a minister's parliamentary staff -- and one should be added for aides to all MPs.

"It's a gaping loophole. There are no rules for MPs' staff, and there should be, because of this phenomena of governments changing," he said.

Note that part of the confusion comes from Harper distorting his party's policy in the first place, as any plausible interpretation of "Hill staffers" would refer to parliamentary rather than departmental involvement. And for that matter, it's awfully hard to see why Lib departmental staff (who are apparently the only ones affected by the ban as now interpreted by the Cons) would expect to get rich based on their connections to a future Con government.

But having implied that their accountability legislation went further than it actually did, the Cons are now using their first taste of power to defend the actions of ex-staffers who are violating at least the spirit, if not the letter, of any attempt to end the revolving-door lobbying system. And they're choosing to do so unnecessarily, as the Cons could quite legitimately claim that they simply don't have any means to stop the current actions when Parliament hasn't yet had a chance to pass accountability legislation.

Instead, the Cons have shown after just a couple of months that they're willing and determined to publicly fight for their own culture of entitlement. And it's not hard to anticipate that turning the ethics-in-government vote (without which Harper would likely still be in opposition) squarely against the Cons next time out.