Perfect recipe for future scandal

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 15/05/2017 (3036 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A “perfect system.”

Which means, of course, nothing could possibly go wrong.

Could it?

Premier Brian Pallister’s flippant response last week to questions about his methods of communicating on government business while vacationing in Costa Rica has done nothing to diminish legitimate concerns about the security and, for that matter, the volume of information being transmitted between the premier and his staff and cabinet colleagues while he is out of the province.

After a freedom-of-information request by the NDP revealed no records of phone calls or emails between Mr. Pallister and his staff via government-issued devices during his southern sojourns, the premier declared that he employs other (non-government) methods of communication but refused to elaborate, stating that specifying the nature of those accounts and/or devices might compromise the security of the information being transmitted.

“Perfect system so far,” he added glibly while declaring that no information leaks have occurred as a result of employing his secrecy-shrouded techniques.

As public relations strategies go, this approach has some rather obvious flaws.

In his run to become Manitoba’s premier, Mr. Pallister pledged an open and accountable government. This approach is most decidedly at odds with that aspiration. The use of private, rather than governmental, telephones and email servers might be a “perfect” way for a politician or government to shield communications from public scrutiny, but it’s also a strategy that inevitably produces less-than-perfect outcomes for those who favour it.

For a glimmer of where the Manitoba government’s simmering information-stream imbroglio might be headed, Mr. Pallister might consider the plight last week of Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall, who was found to have been using a private email service to conduct provincial government business.

Despite offering initial assurances that the private email account is administered by an IT security company whose standards and software are on par with those of government servers, Mr. Wall was forced to backtrack a day later and his office issued a statement saying “he will be using a government of Saskatchewan email account for government business.”

Or perhaps Manitoba’s premier, who has described himself as a voracious reader during his Costa Rican getaways, might spend a few hours poring through the reams of newsprint devoted to Hillary Clinton’s private email server woes during the U.S. presidential election.

The lessons are obvious. Mr. Pallister’s obstinacy, however, seems to prevent him from heeding them.

As is the case with the newly discovered numbered company that also raised questions last week — when asked for details about Pallister Investments 22 Ltd., and whether he derives monetary benefit from it, the premier’s response was “Frankly, it’s none of your business” — Mr. Pallister’s handling of the government communications issue demonstrates a level of stubbornness and arrogance that will continue to undermine his government’s efforts unless his closest advisers can convince him to amend his message.

There’s no scandal here, as much as the NDP wishes there were. But unless Mr. Pallister comes clean about communications and adopts more transparent and provably secure methods of keeping in touch while he’s tropically reclined, it’d be best to insert the word “yet” into the previous sentence.

What he’s doing now amounts to a perfect recipe for a longer-term political mess.