Carney’s Next Priority: Fighting (Perceptions Of) Corruption

On Conspiracies And Opportunities

There is a considerable amount of discussion right now about Jeffrey Epstein, an alleged cabal of elite sex pests, and the nature of what does and doesn’t constitute a list. It’s an interesting conversation in a lot of ways, and one that I think says a lot about the state of the world even if most of it is unknowable. People have always wanted to believe in conspiracies about influence wielding elites, whether that meant Jewish bankers or business owners or PizzaGate or JFK being killed by the Mafia.

Politicians shouldn’t play into that ignorance - having worked on the Hill, plus whatever insight this site’s existence has given me, makes clear that what is often called a conspiracy is either coincidence, incompetence, or hubris. But there are things that are unacceptable. The fact that Christine Elliott could walk out of being Ontario’s Minister of Health and Deputy Premier and into a lobbying job at a private health care provider after one year is disgraceful, though Stephen Harper’s five year lobbying ban stops such a revolving door at the Federal level.

That said, with Conservatives trying to make Carney’s conflicts of interest a problem, and what we know about people’s desire to believe grand conspiracies, a strong plank for the Liberals should be anti-corruption. We’ve seen the way Conservatives engage in dirty dealings at the provincial level, and we need to harness the voters’ hatred of elites favouring elites. At a time when Pierre Poilievre is harping on Carney’s elitism, it’s time to make clear we get it.

There has always been a duality to Carney’s appeal - the fact that he’s an experienced leader in finance and business helped him, but it’s also left him open to accusations he’s corrupt. His candidate and Cabinet choices - friends from the corporate world, and Evan Solomon, who worked at the Eurasia Group after leaving CTV - are rife with people he’s known for a long time. None of that’s illegal, or even necessarily bad, but it is bad if the companies those people came from, or anything Brookfield owns even a part of, is suddenly benefiting from the Carney government.

But that’s also an opportunity for Carney, done properly - govern not according to the letter of disclosure law, but to the spirit of it. He did so by placing his assets in a blind trust upon taking office, not at the end of the window for disclosure, and that should be the way he governs. There should be much faster windows for disclosures, tightening of the definitions of what triggers a conflict, and a comprehensive review of the law to see what the technological revolution since Harper’s mid-00s rewrite’s missed. And it needs to tackle the very nature of “Government Relations” firms that are lobbying shops in all but name.

Damien Kurek, the Conservative ex-MP who stood aside for Pierre Poilievre in Alberta, immediately took a job at Upstream Strategy Group, which as far as I can tell is a well connected Conservative Government Relations firm where he will be … well, it’s unclear. The press release claims he will be providing “tailored government relations, public affairs, and stakeholder engagement solutions for Upstream’s clients in Alberta and beyond", which seems to mean he’ll be telling corporate clients how they should go about their lobbying most effectively. If you think that it’s a good thing for an MP out of a job for less than a month to be sitting in a corporate boardroom telling people that you should take X approach with Minister Z but Y approach with Minister W, then I suspect you’ll be in the minority.

I’m quite confident that Kurek - who does qualify as a Designated Public Office Holder as an ex-MP - will not himself engage in lobbying or in any way contravene his legal obligations. He’s not stupid enough to get caught. But is it materially in the spirit of the law if an ex-MP is sitting there as the puppet master while probably still in the CPC Caucus WhatsApp group? Does it help the public belief in politics if this kind of revolving door between politics and lobbying by any other name is allowed to continue?

Carney has an opportunity to use his status as both insider and outsider to move the public discussion to a more useful place. He has an opportunity to move past the brand of corruption that plagued the last two Liberal governments by virtue of the fact he owes no loyalty to those governments. He can be a Different Kind Of Liberal in more ways than just one who cuts the Carbon Tax.

I’ve long advocated for some form of Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) modelled on New South Wales, with broad subpoena power, public hearings under penalty of perjury, and the ability to direct their own investigations without needing referrals or pressure from opposition political parties. It’s the kind of statutory instrument that we should have, instead of praying that public reporting forces a police investigation that goes nowhere (remember, the RCMP investigation into Jason Kenney’s UCP leadership win didn’t conclude until after Kenney was a private citizen again).

Do I think much would be found by this? No - I think we mostly run a non-corrupt government, and where we’re too cozy with corporate interests it’s because politicians are too trapped by inertia to do something else than genuine corrupt influence. But that’s not the point.

People are predisposed to believing that there is undue influence held by, and undue deference given to, rich, connected, and powerful people. The best way for Carney to fight that is by creating the tools to find and fight that corruption and hold it accountable. If it reveals a lot of corruption, great, and if not, then we know that it’s also done its job of deterrence. It’s a win win. But coming out swinging as an anti-corruption fighter is a free way Carney can show he’s not trapped by his corporate connections or blind to his weak spots.