The Responsibility Crisis in Canada

The Responsibility Crisis in Canada by Thomas S. Axworthy Over the last two years the federal government’s sponsorship programme has been the subject of a study by the Auditor General, the Standing Committee on Public Accounts and most recently by a Public Inquiry headed by Justice John Gomery. Central to all these studies have been questions of accountability and responsibility. This article argues that Canada needs to re-discover the ethic of responsibility. It also puts forth specific structural reforms for parliament, the public service, and the executive. ne of the core problems that the 2003 report of the sponsible and accountable for whatever went wrong OAuditor General, the hearings of the Public with it.”2 Accounts Committee, and the Gomery The pattern described by Franks to the Public Ac- Commission of Inquiry into the sponsorship scandal has counts Committee has generally been repeated in testi- revealed is the absence of any notion of responsibility1 mony to the Gomery Commission. One exception is from those in high positions. Testimony has unveiled former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, who told the Com- that senior public officials ignored several internal mission: “I regret any mistakes that might have been complaints about irregularities in awarding ad contracts. made in the course of this program, or any other govern- Political staff whose job it is to advise ministers involved ment program. As Prime Minister, I take ultimate re- themselves in policy implementation, the traditional sponsibility for everything good and everything bad that preserve of the public service. The Minister in charge of happened in the government.”3 Another is David Public Works, Alfonso Gagliano, denied liability Dingwall, the former Minister of Public Works, who ac- because he claimed that he lacked knowledge. The knowledged that he crossed the line in 1995 when he in- Deputy Minister of Public Works equally denied liability sisted to his Deputy Minister Ron Quail that Chuck because he too lacked information. So the question Guité, the epicenter of the crisis, be promoted to direct obviously arises: if the Minister and Deputy Minister communications activities.4 Neither Minister nor their were not running the department, who was? staffs should interfere in the hiring process of public ser- Parliamentary scholar, C.E.S. Franks, put his finger vants. But from the general performance of Ottawa deci- squarely on the problem in testimony to the Public Ac- sion-makers on recalling their roles in sponsorship, it is counts Committee in May, 2004: “Not one of the many evident that we have a crisis of responsibility in Canada. witnesses who came before the Committee, neither Organizations or collectives do not have moral respon- ex-ministers nor public servants, ever stated: yes, man- sibilities, the individuals within them do. Understand- aging this program was my responsibility, and I am re- ing the primacy of responsibility is the starting point of accountability. To respond is to answer.5 Therefore, to be responsible is to be answerable. Government rests on the ethic that people in positions of power take responsibil- Thomas S. Axworthy is Chairman of the Centre for the Study of Democracy at Queen's University, Kingston, and was a ity for their actions. On responsibility and accountability contributor to the 1997 Universal Declaration of Human we have both a moral and a structural problem. Morally Responsibilities by the InterAction Council. This is a revised we have had a retreat from responsibility. Restoring this version of his Distinguished Visitor Lecture at the Library of ethical base must be the first priority. A starting point Parliament on April 8, 2005. SUMMER 2005 / CANADIAN PARLIAMENTARY REVIEW 7 will be for parliament to debate the Universal Declara- appetites; in proportion as their love of justice is above tion of Human Responsibilities. Structurally, we have al- their rapacity; in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and lowed confusion to set in about the separate roles of presumption; in proportion as they are more disposed to public servants, ministers, and their personal political listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference advisors. We need a clearly understood framework of re- to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist unless a sponsibility and accountability that is endorsed both by controlling power upon will and appetite be placed the legislature and the executive. We do not need to wait somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal for the report of the Gomery Commission to know that constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds we have an immediate problem that badly needs fixing. cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.9 The Morality of Responsibility The philosopher Immanuel Kant paraphrased Mat- thew 10, Verse 16: “Politics says: ‘Be ye therefore clever Ethics are a system of moral standards or principles as serpent,’ but morals adds as a limiting condition: ‘and that could be accepted universally, that is, by anyone innocent as doves.’” Kant believed that like the serpents who did not know his or her personal characteristics and doves of Jesus, politics and ethics could co-exist. such as social class, race, sex or nationality. According to But, as Dennis F. Thompson writes, there is often a ten- Hans Küng, the world renowned moral philosopher, a sion between them.10 Politics is the realm of power, gov- global ethic is “nothing but the necessary minimum of erned by utility; ethics is the realm of principle, ruled by common values, standards and basic attitudes.”6 Among imperatives. What joins the two is the primacy of respon- that necessary minimum is the concept of human obliga- sibility and accountability. The first defence against the tion or responsibility. Since the time of the Stoics we have corrosive impact of power is a personal sense of morality known that as we develop our sense of responsibility we among those in position of authority. If there is no per- increase our internal freedom by fortifying our moral sonal ethics, then the state becomes organized character. kleptocracy, like Zaire under Mobutu, or anarchy, like With freedom of choice, including the choice to do Hobbes' war of everyone against all. If this first defence right or wrong, a responsible moral character will ensure buckles then we have interlocking structures and that the former will prevail. Therefore each of us devel- protections, such as parliamentary accountability or the ops moral codes of responsibility as lovers, spouses, par- American system of the separation of powers. As Madi- ents or citizens. In Plato's Crito, Socrates says that son wrote in No. 63 of the Federalist papers, “Responsi- conscience or the sense of responsibility “is what I seem bility, in order to be reasonable, must be limited to to hear them saying just as a mystic seems to hear the objects within the power of the responsible party, and in strains of music, and the sound of their argument sings so order to be effectual, must relate to operations of that loudly in my head that I cannot hear the other side.”7 Soc- power.”11 rates, the Stoics, and the prophets all recognized that with freewill human beings battle internally and inces- In Canada, it is my thesis that we are santly with the competing forces of light versus the both deficient in the ethic of personal power of darkness. As Montaigne wrote, “so marvelous moral responsibility and in our is the power of conscience! It makes us betray, accuse, and fight ourselves, and in the absence of an outside wit- structures of accountability. ness, it brings us forward against ourselves.”8 So, moral responsibility or conscience is vital to our de- Morals must be lived, but before that they must be velopment as human beings. We are only free if we are taught. Many institutions have this responsibility – not a slave to evil. But it is equally central to our notions churches, schools, universities, etc. Responsibility and of political freedom. Freedom and responsibility are in- rights are intertwined but in our age, as opposed to most terdependent. Responsibility is a natural voluntary of world history, it is rights which receive all the atten- check on freedom. Just as an individual must have limits tion, with responsibility or obligation shuffled off to the if we are to co-exist with our fellow human beings, so too, corner. The Human Rights Movement, supported by a political freedom must be exercised within a framework plethora of government and non-governmental organi- of mutual obligation. No one has been more eloquent on zations, has done a magnificent job in getting people to this point than Edmund Burke in his 1791 letter to a understand their sights. But if we have an easily defined member of the National Assembly of France: human rights community (Amnesty International, Hu- Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to man Rights Watch, the Canadian Centre for Human their disposition to put moral chains upon their own Rights and Democracy, a slew of law school courses, the 8 CANADIAN PARLIAMENTARY REVIEW /SUMMER 2005 Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, etc.), where is the needs – Canada needs – a similar normative break- human responsibility community? Can anyone name through in the realm of responsibility. We should know even a single institution that has the propagation of re- our duties as spouses, parents, and citizens as well as we sponsibility norms as its primary mission? Yet, the more know our rights. Parliament should debate the Universal freedom we enjoy, the greater the responsibility we bear, Declaration of Human Responsibilities and apply its ethical towards others and ourselves.

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