Trust - Processes

The Government of Canada & SNC Lavalin

We have a situation where wild allegations are flying, expressed with anger and resentment in terms of self-righteous indignation.

That suggests to me a system failure.

With my cursory look at the stuff coming out, I think I see at least a difference of style, certainly a difference of expectations about how the process should unfold.

I assert all efforts were made with best of intentions, even including the original writing of the statute within a budget omnibus bill.  I suspect a need was seen to be addressed rather urgently, hence the format of including the statute within a budget bill. 

I suspect no record was made of considerations of operating procedures required to realize the intent of the statute.  Thus I further suspect no procedural rules were included, that is no standard operating procedure with sequential tasks for delivery. 

That means at the time of the first test case for the statute, the sitting Justice Minister had to come up with those procedures with the hope they would meet the eventual court challenges.  The Minister, as our government has done since Confederation, was assumed to know how to craft these processes without consulting other ministries or anyone else, unless the Minister chose too.  This would be treated much like experiential learning, where the work would be completed and eventually tested in court.

Additionally we have a Prime Minister with a set of expectations and a Justice Minister with another set of expectations about the style and manner of doing government business. 

Each of these people face respective sets of challenges, which are probably not the same for each.  They then proceed to try to meet their own challenges by working together.  Having two sets of perspectives is highly likely to create miscommunication.  If this situation is not managed carefully, it can easily lead to frustration and eventually hard feelings. 

However, this is all taking place in the world of big P politics.  There is an election looming.  When parties opposing the incumbent in this election hear of disharmony in the government, there is a tendency to put it all into as bad a light as possible, complete with personal attacks.  Of course the people accusing, simply by virtue of being accusers, put themselves into the position of being holier than the accused.  The harsher the wording of the accusations, the more effective this becomes.

Interestingly, this is a case where the parties to the confrontation have not broken any laws.  This is not an actual scandal, but no actual scandal makes it hard to sell papers, so many political commentators have chimed in using the exact same terminology as the accusers. 

Now all that wall paper is making it look like we actually have a wall. 

I think all parties should take this opportunity, especially as there is no threat of jail time for any party wishing to co-operate fully, to re-examine the processes at play here.  The processes of intra-cabinet decision-making and the processes of applying and possibly amending the statute. 

Everyone seems to be “losing the plot”.  The plot is the democratic governance of Canadian society in the effective manner expected by Canadians.  Simply slinging allegations and counter allegations, seasoned with personal attacks, serves absolutely no useful purpose.

Let’s all get real here folks!

Michael Klein March 7, 2019