Gradual, then sudden, corruption

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 28/12/2023 (651 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.

“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually, then suddenly.”

This dialogue is from Ernest Hemingway’s 1926 novel, The Sun Also Rises, where the main character, Mike, is asked about his money troubles, and his famous response has, for nearly a century, been a catchphrase to describe the slow rise of corruption, waste or greed.

It’s a phrase that has stuck in my mind for a few months, particularly as I ask myself how it was that our former PC government lost the moral authority to govern. Gradually, yes, there were missteps and mistakes along the way, some of which I’ve already written about in this column.

And then it came suddenly.

The date was Oct. 12.

My phone rang as I was getting ready to head out the door to meet my campaign team at a restaurant for a post-election dinner. There wasn’t much to celebrate, but my team had worked tirelessly and I wanted to offer my appreciation. I was running late, my husband was already waiting in the vehicle, but I took the call anyway.

It was my former colleague Jeff Wharton.

We hadn’t spoken in a while, and I was happy to hear from him. He was someone I had known since we both became PC candidates in 2010 and both ran unsuccessfully in 2011; and then he and I were the first two to get nominated in the lead-up to 2016. I offered him my congratulations again for winning his seat, and he offered consolation to me on losing mine. With small talk out of the way, he cut to the chase.

He asked me, in my capacity as an acting minister of the environment, to approve the Sio Silica sand mine project.

He assured me the project could get green-lighted via a director’s order (meaning a bureaucrat could sign off at this stage without it going to cabinet for approval) and all that was required was a ministerial directive to that director to proceed. He then told me it was a project of significant importance to the (defeated) premier, but because of a conflict, she herself couldn’t offer that directive.

It took me a moment to comprehend what was being asked.

Once the magnitude of this request had registered, it was obvious I would offer no such approval, and the call ended. We have not spoken since then, and I believe the quest to contravene “caretaker convention” and garner the necessary approval ended that moment. I knew the minister responsible, former PC MLA Kevin Klein, had also declined approving, hence the reason for my being asked. Our time in government was coming to a swift end as Wab Kinew officially became premier on Oct. 18, and the project was no longer subject to our purview.

Fast-forward a few months and, with the approvals for the project pending, Kinew came out last week and stated, correctly, that our PC government had tried to ram the project through during this transition period between governments, which the PCs then denied.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, my former colleague came out and made an incredulous statement reported by the media on Wednesday, saying the caretaker convention was “100 per cent respected.”

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It landed like a gut punch. Reading something I knew to be patently false made it suddenly clear why politics, in many circles, has become such a dishonourable profession and why we see fewer good people offering to serve in this capacity. It’s sad, because now is arguably when we need good governance more than ever, and the only way we will achieve that is to have honourable people serve in both government and opposition.

Reflecting back to Oct. 12, it was an unconscionable request and the moment the moral authority had suddenly vanished for the former PC government. It wasn’t always that way, and certainly never started out as such. Sure, there were policy decisions made in the beginning days of that government that are cause for disagreement, but never, to my knowledge, anything corrupt.

That only happened gradually, and then suddenly.

Rochelle Squires is a recovering politician after serving 7 1/2 years in the Manitoba legislature. She is a political and social commentator.

rochelle@rochellesquires.ca