Prime Minister Justin Trudeau responds to a question as he speaks with media following a cabinet shuffle on July 26 in Ottawa.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press
The old saying about “the fox guarding the henhouse” refers to a serial offender who is given the job of policing himself, thereby creating an obvious conflict of interest.
What, though, is the right expression to describe a situation in which a skulk of foxes (yes, that is the term) is in charge of naming an independent overseer of its activities in and around the henhouse, but somehow never quite gets around to it?
“The Trudeau government guarding the Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner” is the right answer.
It has been almost six months since the previous ethics commissioner, Mario Dion, resigned on Feb. 21, but the Liberals have yet to appoint his replacement.
They made a patently lame attempt at naming an interim commissioner in March when they gave the job to the sister-in-law of a senior Liberal cabinet minister. The inevitable outcry forced Martine Richard to step down three weeks later.
Not that her personal credibility was in question. Ms. Richard is an experienced investigator in the ethics commissioner’s office who was originally hired a decade ago under a Conservative government. She has worked there during a remarkable stretch in which the office has ruled that a number of high-ranking Liberals – including the Prime Minister, former finance minister Bill Morneau, and her brother-in-law, Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc – violated multiple sections of the Conflict of Interest Act and/or the conflict of interest code for MPs.
The real problem was and is the Liberals’ rank indifference to the rules governing the conduct of MPs.
Ms. Richard’s tone-deaf appointment notwithstanding, nothing captures that toxic culture better than Mr. Dion’s recommendation, as he left office, that the government send its entire caucus for remedial courses on such core competencies as not giving lucrative contracts to your good friends and family members, and not attempting to influence a quasi-judicial tribunal on behalf of another person.
Clearly, there is work for a federal ethics commissioner. And yet Mr. Trudeau still hasn’t replaced Mr. Dion. This is problematic in more than one way.
Under the rules governing the Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, the Prime Minister is allowed to name an interim commissioner for a maximum of six months. Given that Mr. Trudeau named Ms. Richard to the job on March 28, he presumably has until the end of September to name a fulltime replacement.
Mr. Dion this week said the delay in naming a new commissioner means investigations have to sit on a shelf until someone is appointed – a fact a spokesperson for the commissioner’s office confirmed Thursday.
He also said the process of finding his replacement, in which he is involved, is not going well. He blamed a lack of qualified candidates interested in the job.
But meanwhile, every province and territory has managed to put an ethics watchdog in place. Worse, the federal job has now been vacant for the longest period since the current version of the role was created in 2007.
That means the government that has had the largest number of high-profile run-ins with the ethics commissioner is also the government that has allowed the henhouse to sit unguarded for a record number of days. Foxes are gonna fox, to use a more modern version of the old saying.
Mr. Trudeau should name a new ethics commissioner before the House resumes sitting on Sept. 18. He needs to do so to restore a semblance of Liberal credibility when it comes to the democratic values represented by Ottawa’s conflict of interest and ethics rules.
Then again, one despairs that he may never get around to it, because Mr. Trudeau is a serial failure when it comes to filling federal vacancies.
The Globe and Mail reported on a critical shortage of federally appointed judges in May, when there were 88 vacancies on benches across the country. As of this month, that number has been reduced to... 86.
There is also the matter of naming someone to head a public inquiry into Beijing’s interference in Canadian elections, a responsibility Mr. Trudeau continues to duck.
A democracy needs independent watchdogs to guard its institutions against the threats that are always skulking about. Why doesn’t Mr. Trudeau understand that?