MLA expenses a scandal but….
Yes, the MLA expenses scandal is a scandal. Some of what some MLAs filed as legitimate expenses were not. A few claims may even be criminal. Let’s make MLAs pay back what they can’t justify, and prosecute those whose actions crossed the line. Let’s fix a screwed-up system. Then let’s move on.
When it comes to scandalous wastes of taxpayers’ dollars, MLA expenses represent a piddling amount, even within the auditor-general’s report that started the current tsunami of public outrage.
The auditor-general’s report painted with a broad brush, flagging items he deemed excessive, lacked receipts or were otherwise questionable without digging deeper to determine which might actually be justifiable.
While many expenses—can you say the Dance Dance Revolution video game in the hands of ex-Tory MLA Len Goucher’s grandson, or the patio furniture in Liberal Dave Wilson’s backyard?—seem indefensible, others are more iffy.
Take ex-premier Rodney MacDonald’s $3,250 purchase of a projection screen for presentations. Hardly something for your rec room. MacDonald says community groups still use it. Did he pay too much? Should such items be paid out of constituency expenses? Good questions. But neither justifies labeling MacDonald a pig or a crook.
Or take the pink Nano—valued at $261.06 —that shows up among NDP MLA Leonard Preyra’s expenses. Preyra says he donated it to the Italian-Canadian Cultural Association of Nova Scotia for a fundraiser. He’s not alone. NDP Transportation Minister Bill Estabrooks proudly acknowledges he spent much of his flagged $44,424 in advertising, donations and gifts on local schools and sports teams. Should MLAs use constituency funds to help not-for-profit groups and teams? Another good question. But is doing so a flogging offence?
And, while the auditor general noted over half of legislative members—28 of 51—filed duplicate receipts, the report shows the total cost was $14,123, or approximately $92.31 per MLA per year of the audit.
“The types of wrongdoing… and the scale of it… simply would not warrant more work from my office,” the auditor-general initially said. Partly because of the outcry and new information he’s received, he is now looking at possible criminality. Go for it. Prosecute the cheaters.
Then let’s reform the system: make new expense rules in public, require tendering for purchases, demand receipts for everything and then publish every MLA’s expense report every month on the web.
With those—easy—changes in place, let’s finally turn our attention to the same auditor general’s report, which identifies a $52 million windfall private developers get to pocket from those infamous P-3 school projects. Now that’s scandalous!
Copyright 2010 Stephen Kimber
Time for Liberals to crawl out of the muck
Pity Stephen McNeil. The NDP wants to stop his Liberals from continuing to tap a tainted $2.37-million party trust fund to pay its bills.
“The motive… is political,” McNeil complained to reporters after the government introduced the bill this week, adding plaintively: “You’d have to ask them why they would specifically go after us.”
Uh… No, I don’t have to ask the government, Mr. McNeil.
I know why.
So do you.
And all I can say is, it’s about time.
For decades, Liberal and Tory governments would fatten their party coffers with money raised by a practice known as "tollgating." If you were a business and wanted to sell to the province, you had to fork over a kickback to the party-in-power’s bagman for the privilege. You paid so much for every case of booze sold to the liquor commission, every side of beef delivered to the regional hospital cafeteria, every pencil peddled to the local school board.
The parties raked in millions as a result. In the 1980s when the Mounties investigated the fundraising practices of Gerald Regan’s Liberal government, they discovered it had raised more than $4 million illegally during its eight years in office.
The Mounties filed influence-peddling charges against three senior Liberal bagmen, including one known as “Suitcase” Simpson for his suitcases of cash. One pleaded guilty. Two others were convicted at trial, though one appealed and his conviction was overturned on a technicality. He was later acquitted at a re-trial.
The Mounties tried to investigate the fundraising practices of provincial Tory governments too, but—as an investigator testified during the Liberals’ trial—Tory fundraisers had burned their records before the police could seize them. The Mounties found only one intact file, which indicated the same kickback pattern the Liberals had employed.
Despite the odour, the Liberals continued to use this dirty money, including to underwrite a secret salary for their leader. Eventually, when the stench got too bad, the party reluctantly agreed to audit the controversial funds and turn over any tainted money to the province.
But, thanks to the usual political jiggery-pokery, the audit wasn’t an audit. The party claimed only $1.3 million worth of the money was “proven or alleged to have been obtained” through kickbacks. They kept the rest. And still use it to give the party an unfair advantage over its rivals.
In opposition,the NDP filibustered a 2006 Tory-Liberal campaign finance reform bill because it failed to deal with this trust funds issue. So it’s no surprise the NDP is now using its majority to finally flush the system of these proceeds of crime.
The only surprise is that Stephen McNeil isn’t smart enough to simply say thank you and get on with rebuilding his party. Pity.
***
Online postscript: In the occasional way of the print-on-paper world, events overtook this column between the time it was written and published in Metro. On Thursday, October 22, the NDP’s new legislation unexpectedly and quickly passed through all its legislative hurdles without opposition or even discussion.
McNeil’s Liberals did not oppose it. "It was my direction and I take full responsibility that this issue needs to be behind us," McNeil explained to reporters after the vote. "It needs to be behind the party, and (let’s) get on with doing the business of bringing our Liberal values, Liberal views and engaging Nova Scotians about, not only how we hold the government accountable, but the things that matter to them and how we put together public policy."
So… while I can’t claim ex-post-facto credit for the fact McNeil so quickly saw the light on this issue, I can congratulate him for his wise decision. Time to move forward.
Copyright 2009 Stephen Kimber
The lynch mob meets the expenses scandal
The morning after the big semi-reveal—the auditor general had turned over to the RCMP expense-claims files on one current and four former MLAs, but he wouldn’t say which ones to avoid compromising the criminal investigation—CBC Radio Information Morning’s political panel weighed in.
The panelists—veteran freelance journalist Ralph Surrette and former newspaper editor and Tory cabinet minister Jane Purves—both have well-earned journalistic credentials for fighting political corruption. That may be why what struck me most about their comments was their undertone of unease at the seemingly insatiable media appetite for—and public obsession with—this scandal, to the detriment both of more important issues, and also of public faith in elected officials.
The reasons for their unease quickly became apparent.
Within hours, Kevin Gaudet, spokesperson for a self-appointed lynch mob—also sometimes known as the Canadian Taxpayers’ Federation—was telling a reporter our legislators should forget the niceties of due process, innocent until proven guilty and all that inconsequential stuff, and expel forthwith any member even suspected of finagling or fudging an expense from the legislature.
“Perhaps,” he suggested—his tongue unfortunately not in his cheek but his foot firmly planted in his mouth—“that would raise the bar of integrity.”
Indeed.
In the same article—hopefully in response to a hypothetical question from the reporter and as a comment on tactics rather than ethics—Acadia University political science professor Ian Stewart mused on the likelihood that Independent MLA Trevor Zinck is the single still-sitting member of the legislature whose expenses the Mounties are now investigating. If that’s the case, Stewart argued, the other MLAs could easily bounce him from the seat to which he was duly elected as “a cost-free way of attempting to show they are on top of the integrity issue and they’re responding to the public’s outrage.”
Fanning the outrage flames, Gaudet weighed in with the self-fulfilling suggestion that the MLA expenses scandal “fuels speculation by the voting public, taxpayers, that too many politicians are a bunch of crooks and thieves.”
I’ve covered Nova Scotia politics for 40 years. I’ve met a few crooks and thieves. Most MLAs aren’t. But they are human; thanks to lax legislation and less oversight, some found it too easy to confuse private benefit with public interest. Outrage over the expenses scandal was a wake-up call; this winter’s legislative reforms make the system more transparent and less susceptible to expense-fiddling. Outrage worked.
But now it’s time to let the criminal process work. And move on to other more serious—and costly—political screw-ups. P3-schools, anyone.
Copyright 0610 Stephen Kimber
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About
STEPHEN KIMBER, a Professor of Journalism at the University of King's College in Halifax, is an award-winning writer, editor and broadcaster. He is the author of one novel -- Reparations -- and seven non-fiction books.
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