When political staff overstep their responsibilities

Did you know you can call a political party corrupt in Manitoba but not a government in Ontario?

NDP Premier Wab Kinew referred to the “corruption of the PC party” from his seat in the Manitoba legislature in October without incident. By contrast, NDP Opposition Leader Marit Stiles was escorted out of her seat in the Ontario legislature by the sergeant-at-arms last Wednesday when she called the PC government of Doug Ford “corrupt.”

Why the difference? Context, evidently.

“The codification of unparliamentary language,” states the textbook of House of Commons Procedure and Practice, “has proven impractical as it is the context in which words or phrases are used that the chair must consider.” The “most important” context, it goes on, is “whether or not the remarks created disorder in the chamber.” The section concludes with this delightful guidance: “language deemed unparliamentary one day may not necessarily be deemed unparliamentary on another day.”

In other words, it’s a grey area.

The grey area surrounding the unparliamentary use of the word “corrupt” in Ontario stems from the context giving rise to it. That was the use of political staff to administer government policy in general and give out public money in particular.

Ford is under fire for how his government awarded $1.3 billion in training grants to companies and organizations from a skills development fund. The auditor general evaluated the program, releasing a report that concluded “the selection process was not fair, transparent, or accountable.” The AG found that 54 per cent of projects received funding despite being ranked as either poor, low, or medium against the program’s criteria.

Those projects displaced 670 higher-ranked projects even though there was “little rationale to explain why.” That amounted to more than $740 million of funding.

Meanwhile, 64 projects that had been ranked as low or medium received funding after hiring lobbyists, raising questions of preferential treatment and giving rise to the corruption allegations. Despite the Ontario conflict of interest code for all public officials explicitly stating, “don’t give preferential treatment,” the narrative suggests otherwise.

This all stems from the use of political staff in the labour minister’s office to make final funding decisions, rather than impartial public servants. Four other provinces, including Manitoba, have similar skills-training programs. All use bureaucrats, not political staff, to make funding decisions.

The auditor general found that the labour minister’s office provided no written feedback to the department explaining their decisions to fund or not fund projects. They simply stamped it “minister’s rationale.” This is responsibility without accountability.

In our system of responsible government, ministers are accountable to the legislature for decisions by themselves and their departments, including their own political offices.

Deputy ministers and public servants are answerable to the legislature for their decisions, but ministers take formal responsibility and hence, accountability, for them. Political staff are accountable only to their minister, not to the deputy minister or the legislature, leaving them in a tenuous accountability position when they make decisions on matters that more properly belong to public servants.

Allowing political staff to decide on program funding undermines the principles of responsible government.

Ford’s explanation is that the public service “does not see” that some sectors across the province might need help; only elected officials can do that. This is specious by itself but usefully reminds that democratically elected ministers are the ones who are ultimately responsible and accountable for all public spending. But they typically do so on recommendations from the public service, not on their own accord.

Political staff have a legitimately important role in our system. They are there to give political advice to ministers that cannot be provided by neutral public servants. They are not there to replace the public service in their key duties or vice versa.

Yet, by arrogating to themselves decision-making authority over handing out training money, they did exactly that. The Ford government basically invited the corruption charges, and even police investigations, now coming their way.

After decades of increasingly stringent accountability and ethics rules, Canada’s public sector hygiene is generally pretty good. Individual cases of corruption occur, but rarely institutional cases. But the stakes are higher for the latter. Institutional corruption can lead to a loss of public trust costing much more than the actual money at stake.

Governments can avoid this by actively guarding against creating “grey governance zones,” an operationally ambiguous environment that dispenses with good governance rules. These can arise in an emergency such as a pandemic where oversight rules for procurement were ignored by bureaucrats such as in the ArriveCAN scandal, or in daily program decision making where funding rules are decided by political staff, as in the Ontario Skills Development Fund.

Common to both is this: ignoring good governance principles and practices lands you in political hot water every time. There is nothing grey about that.

David McLaughlin is a former clerk of the executive council and cabinet secretary in the Manitoba government.