Tagged: Graham Steele
The strange case of the NDP vs. the AG – ctd.
Graham Steele and I had a further email exchange. I suggested he had not answered the question at the heart of my original query:
Why didn’t you (or, if you wish, why didn’t [Cabinet Clerk Greg] Keefe) simply waive solicitor client privilege in these cases?
Canny Mandarins
I added:
A second question that I didn’t ask, but which still hovers over this: Is this a sign that the NDP government, with its very small cabinet, is falling prey to a classic malady of new governments, especially new governments whose ministers have no experience in government: that of being unduly led by the canny Mandarins?
Steele replies:
The answer is that the issue on this specific audit was supposed to be resolved by the broader discussions on revisions to the Auditor General Act. At the time the AG wrote to the Premier in October, everyone expected amendments to be introduced in the spring sitting.
The answer to the second question is “no.” That’s not a fair characterization of what went on here. I think people want to see some dark conspiracy on this issue. The reality is, as usual, much duller. A process to revise the Auditor General Act was underway, and this was one of the issues on the table; the process took longer than expected; the government was busy with other priorities. We’ll deal with the issue in the fall. Within six months, it will be a non-issue.
The strange case of the NDP vs. the AG
At first blush, Auditor General Jacques Lapointe’s refusal to issue an audit opinion on the province’s two largest business loan funds looks like another in the lengthening string of Dexter Government screw-ups. This is the NDP, for heaven’s sake, perennial champions of openness and accountability, withholding 281 documents and redacting a further 32 on grounds of cabinet confidentiality and solicitor-client privilege, thereby thwarting independent scrutiny of the corporate welfare trough they once scorned.
Solicitor-client privilege protects communications between a lawyer and a client from being disclosed without the permission of the client. It binds the lawyer, not the client. In the case at point, government is the client; it has an unfettered right to waive confidentiality. Contrarian asked Finance Minister Graham Steele why it didn’t simply do so.
Steele replied by email: “The key issue is how to allow the auditor general to have access to documents, without thereby opening to disclosure documents which are legitimately confidential…
“This issue, which is known as ‘limited waiver,’ is enshrined in statute in other provinces like Ontario,” Steele wrote. “We have no such provision in our Auditor General Act. Our view is that it is necessary to have a legislative framework in place before privileged documents are handed over to the Auditor General. The auditor general apparently believes the existing legislative framework is sufficient. With respect, we disagree, and we are backed up by the court case and the practice in other provinces.”
Steele cited a December, 2000, Nova Scotia Supreme Court decision, Nova Scotia v. Royal & Sun Alliance, in which the province sued two insurance companies seeking to recover damages paid to abuse victims in residential schools. While carrying out a review of the compensation program, the auditor general of the day was given access to various documents over which the province later tried to claim cabinet or solicitor-client privilege. Partly on grounds of that prior disclosure to the AG, the chambers judge agreed to give the companies access to some but not all of the documents.
In a statement to the media Wednesday, Steele said the province wants “to put the same framework [as Ontario], or a similar one, into our legislation, and then the documents will be turned over to the auditor general.” AllNovaScotia.com quotes Lapointe as complaining he suggested doing exactly that, but was stonewalled by government lawyers.
“[W]ith the benefit of hindsight,” Steele wrote to Contrarian, “It is obvious that we should have identified the issue of limited waiver as an issue that needed to be expedited, and we should have dealt with it in advance of the rest of the revisions.” Yup.
Steele made two other points in his email:
Something that was missed by the reporters was that the audit was supposed to cover March 2008 to September 2009 – in other words, 15 months of the last government, and only 3 months of ours. The idea that we are “covering up,” when most of the audit would have covered the previous government, is … well, far-fetched.
Our Cabinet has never made a decision to deny access. The matter never came before us because in the normal course we would have dealt with the matter when a legislative proposal was ready. In denying access, the Clerk of the Executive Council was simply following through on long-standing and well-established practice.
The second point is at best a distinction without a difference, at worst specious. Through most of the new government’s tenure, Robert Fowler was Clerk of the Executive Council. I worked for Fowler for two years, when he was CEO of the Sydney Tar Ponds Agency and I was its director of communications. We remain friends, and while we didn’t always agree, I can attest that Fowler was punctilious in his observance of elected ministers’ prerogatives. He may well have advised government to withhold the documents, but it is inconceivable he would have directed departments to do so without clearing the matter with the premier or deputy premier. I’m confident the same is true of his successor, Greg Keefe.
The whole embarrassing saga further erodes the new government’s political capital and moral authority. It suggests that, as with many new governments, especially those with no experience governing, senior civil servants are running the show. If this is indeed a problem, it is partly a result of a too-small cabinet, spread too thin.
One final note: Lapointe comes off as a bit of a show-boat in this exchange. He appears to enjoy his increasingly frequent sashays through the media spotlight. A civil servant who has experienced one of his audits complains that his MO is abrasive rather than constructive. That’s consistent with the impression he left here.
NDP dissembling – reader feedback
Contrarian reader Cliff White, who perches somewhere to the left of our new blue NDP government, responds to our complaints about the Dexter/Steele spin on their foregone fiscal promises:
Enough with the self righteousness already. Of course they have to take responsibility for, and be brought to task for, their broken promises and misleading statements. On the other hand, dismissing them offhand and branding them all as liars, as some readers have, is not helpful.
Lets face it: they didn’t get into this predicament on their own. There are, for instance, the unelected workers and volunteers who craft strategies and policy statements they think will sell during the campaign. And there is the public, many of whom later become the complainers, who do not want politicians to tell the truth. They want, and vote for, those who tell them what they want to hear. Take a look around and see how many elected politicians you can find who make a habit of pointing out unpopular truths. It does hurt though to see a government you hoped would set a higher standard, fall into the same old patterns.
Deficits, lies, and audio tape
CBC Cape Breton’s Information Morning host Steve Sutherland did a deft job Tuesday Morning holding Finance Minister Graham Steele’s feet to the fire on the NDP’s no-deficit, no-tax-hikes, no-program-cuts campaign pledge.
Steele had a well-rehearsed answer, including a far-fetched analogy about a family doctor whose honest diagnosis gets overruled by four specialists, but Sutherland was politely persistent. He pressed Steele twice more to explain the glib falsehoods at the core of the NDP’s spring election platform.
“The fact is that we were acting on the best information we had at the time,” Steele said. “The fact is that now we are in government, we have access to more information, better information, and that’s the basis on which we have to move forward.”
This explanation doesn’t hold water. Everyone knew last spring that the province was facing a huge budget shortfall, but Dexter and Steele promised to cure it without running a deficit, without raising taxes, and without cutting programs. They didn’t need better information to know this was impossible; The promise was untenable on its face. To claim now that it was offered in good faith is an untruth as shamefaced as the original promise. It diminishes both men, and the offices they hold.
The sad part of this is that the road map offered by the advisory panel is a good one, but it is overshadowed by the cloud of deceit that now follows the men who must carry it out.
Colin May said earlier that political promises are for fools. On Twitter, Carman Pirie of Halifax reacted to news of political untruths with cynical resignation. “It’s what they know how to do,” he tweeted. “Like getting mad at a dog for barking.”
Attitudes like this are poisonous to the body politic. Twenty years ago, Contrarian would have delighted to catch a premier and a finance minister in an obvious lie. Today, it just feels disheartening—especially from these two, especially when it seems to come so effortlessly.
Are promises for fools?
Contrarian reader Colin May writes :
Do you know anyone who believed the three promises made by DD and his colleagues ? Did you believe they would be able to keep the ERs open ? Everyone in the health business knew it was BS.
Voters just wanted rid of Rodney, they cared less about reality. The less said about the media the better.
Looks like Premier McNeil in four years, about the only bright light in the Canadian Liberal firmament.
Stan Jones adds:
While I tend to agree with the recommendations in the report, I wonder if it isn’t true that Dexter and Steele knew pretty much what the report would say the day they appointed the experts.
The views of all four of them are surely well-known (and if Dexter and Steele didn’t know them, why did they appoint them?) and nothing in the report surprises me, given what each has said in the past.
What new information?
This morning, Contrarian observed that Darrell Dexter had to have known he could not keep the three main promises of his June campaign: no deficit, no tax increases, and no program cuts.
Sure enough, the premier jettisoned all three promises at a news conference this morning, and lamely tried to ascribe his about face to new information:
But there are economic realities that we are faced with today that we did not know six* months ago.
and:
We have information now that no one had six months ago.
Do tell. What new information is that?
The Economic Advisory Panel report offers little that wasn’t known long before the May election call. The very first sentence of the Finance Department’s March, 2009, fiscal overview said, “the 2009-2010 budget will require some very difficult decisions [because] costs continue to rise while revenues remain flat.”
A chart from that review clearly shows the falling revenue:
From the same overview, here’s a chart showing rising expenses:
The plunge in offshore revenues was known as far back as the 2007 fiscal overview, which warned at page 11:
In recent years government has seen revenues increase in a number of areas, most notably in categories related to the production of offshore natural gas. However, some of these upward trend lines are flattening out or even declining.
The 2009 Renewed Energy Strategy, released in January, was equally candid about the pending drop in natural gas revenues at page eight:
Production of natural gas, a cleaner fuel than coal, has made a major contribution to our economy. Revenues from the Sable Offshore Energy Project account for nearly one-tenth of the provincial budget this year and a significant share of our GDP. However, production from Sable has peaked (or will peak soon), and royalties from that project will decline. Deep Panuke is the only other Nova Scotia offshore project moving into production, and its total gas and royalties are expected to be much smaller than Sable. If we are to retain the revenues, jobs, and business opportunities we’ve enjoyed from Sable, we need to attract new, large-scale offshore developments.
The Premier is famous in NDP circles as a numbers geek who pores over polling data. His then-Finance Critic / now-Finance Minister is a voracious reader of and commenter on government financial documents. It is not credible that any of this “new information” was new to them.
It may be new to voters who relied on Dexter’s and Steele’s campaign rhetoric for their understanding of what to expect in the way of deficits, tax hikes, and program cuts.
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* Five months, but who’s counting.
