Saying no to political gifts

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 16/01/2024 (995 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A good friend of mine once gave me a beautiful Christmas present that I really wanted to keep but knew I had to return. It had arrived at my home one afternoon a few days before the holidays and while I thanked my friend profusely for her generosity and friendship, after tallying the price tag and determining the gift would retail about $500, I awkwardly told her that I needed to send it back.

If not, I would’ve had to report it to the ethics commissioner and declare it publicly.

Those are the rules in Manitoba for members of the Legislative Assembly, full stop. Any gift more than $250 needs to be declared, and now, with new rules in effect, gifts in excess of $1,000 need to be declined, unless it’s from a spouse.

However, it’s a whole different ball of wax for federally elected politician. Relatives and friends are excluded from the gift-giving prohibition list, seemingly making extravagant gifts and free trips a welcomed part of the job.

It’s a bit of a head-scratcher at best. Particularly when you compare the pittance of Manitoba’s $20-billion budget next to the $450-billion federal treasury with a whole lot more dough up for grabs among lobbyists and friends.

So why are these rules different? It’s a question that seems to come around every year in what’s becoming a bit of a holiday tradition of turning yet another winter vacation taken by a rich politician into coffee-shop fodder.

Yes, I’m talking about Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s winter holiday in Jamaica. The one where his rich friend picked up the tab to the tune of $9,300 a night for a 10-day vacation, costing more than the average Canadian salary.

As beautiful as those beaches may be, the issue with Trudeau’s trip is twofold.

First is the perception of elitism and the political nightmare created when a politician appears seemingly out-of-touch with the public. As already pointed out by my fellow columnist Dan Lett, Trudeau’s lack of self-awareness is notably remarkable for someone who’s been elected for so long.

There’s a general malaise in government, I can personally attest to, when the leader’s spare time and penchant for warm winter getaways becomes part of the public consciousness. While not an apples-to-apples comparison because former premier Brian Pallister’s vacations were never gifted to him, questions of elitism were similar. Perception is everything in politics and the death knell is when a politician is seen to be lacking empathy with the regular folk.

They are valid concerns, for sure, but I would also argue that just because someone has the means to turn the word ‘holiday’ into a verb doesn’t necessarily mean they’re less capable of making good decisions on behalf of the people they serve.

Having previous personal struggles with affordability, buying groceries, filling up the gas tank and finding money for yet another pair of basketball shoes for a growing teenager does create empathy and awareness, valuable skills around a cabinet table for sure, it’s not essential for good policy making.

Being surrounded with a good team, having a competent deputy and a diverse civil service, and mostly, listening in during those invaluable public consultations can fill in any empathy gap when personal experience falls short. Undoubtedly it helps if you’ve spent time frustratingly waiting for transit that’s lost its schedule to fully appreciate the necessity of reliable service, good policy can still be landed upon without it.

Take for example the Liberal government’s marquee $10-a-day child-care program. It’s highly unlikely the prime minister or many of his cabinet ministers struggled to find affordable, public childcare, yet that never stopped them from rolling out a robust program that is now bringing in $1.2 billion dollars into Manitoba over the next five years and helping create more than 23,000 new affordable child-care spaces. Credit where credit is due.

More problematic than being seemingly out-of-touch and lacking empathy is the potential price tag that comes from having generous friends in high places. Marketing 101 tells us that generosity begets generosity; giving away a small sample on a cracker often leads to a larger exchange of money in return. Reciprocity is hard-wired into most of us and approval-seeking politicians are hardly an exception. Except for them, they’re not always the ones paying the price. Instead, average Canadians are, the ones making less than the price tag of the prime minister’s free vacation.

Thus giving the powers-that-be more than 40 million reasons to change those conflict-of-interest rules.

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

rochelle@rochellesquires.ca