Leaving aside, for the moment, the errors in fact contained in Mr. Johnson’s letter of June 15th am I to infer from his letter that if everyone was jumping off a bridge he would jump as well?
Mr. Johnson has every right to be fine with the Conservative government using the previous Liberal government in setting its ethical standards.
Just as I have the right to demand substantially higher ethical standards of behaviour from our federal Canadian government, rather than tolerating the lowest common denominator as the standard.
The fact is that the federal government should not be worrying about being ‘embarrassed’ over the issues of affordable housing and child poverty but about addressing these issues.
The fact is that, prior to Mr. Harper’s appointment of Mr. Braley, senate appointments had indeed been made to party faithful – as a reward for years of hard work on behalf of the party. Mr.Braley’s ‘faithful service’ was large financial contributions, a very different kettle of fish. Leaving one to draw the conclusion that under Mr. Harper a senator seat is the reward for substantial enough monetary contributions to the Party.
The fact is there is no requirement that forces the federal parliament to appoint senators on a specific timeline. Mr. Harper could have kept his promise not to appoint senators.
Instead, despite Mr. Harper’s repeated attacks on the previous Liberal government for appointing senators, as soon as the opportunity to appoint enough senators so that the Conservatives would control the Senate and could force legislation through without being troubled by any sober second thoughts Mr. Harper appointed those senators.
The fact is there was nothing for Mr. Harper to over-rule on the matter of pensions. When the day came that Mr. Harper and members of the Conservative caucus had to either a) opt into the golden pension parliamentarians have approved for themselves or b) opt out and never be eligible for said sweet, overly generous pensions Mr. Harper and the Conservatives scurried right up to pig-out at the public trough.
All Mr. Harper and the Conservatives had to do to remain true their own words on the matter of pensions was – just say NO. But when push came to shove and it would cost Mr. Harper and the other members of the Conservative caucus big pension $$$, expediency (and their pocketbooks) won out.
Mr. Johnson’s most significant factual error lies in his dismissal of ethics in his statement “We have far bigger problems than noted above …”
Ethics are a fundamental building block, perhaps THE fundamental building block, in a government, a country or a society. Without an ethical underpinning considerably higher than the lowest common denominator we are going to continue to get the government, country and society that the majority of Canadians are very dissatisfied with. Despite it being the government, country and society that we have, through our actions and choices – individually and collectively – built.
If we want to change the government, country and society for the better we need to start with a solid ethical foundation and not a set of ethics that is based on ‘everybody does it’.
The problem for so many is that setting one’s ethical standards based on high-principles and honourable behaviour often causes inconvenience, sometimes great inconvenience by denying one convenient, self-serving behaviours.
If you promise not to appoint senators then, even/particularly when politically convenient you don’t appoint senators. If you are going to attack MP pensions then when it is time to opt in or out you opt out – even if it is costly.
I make no apologies for feeling we need to hold our government, our country, our society and most of all ourselves to higher ethical standards in order to change the same old government, country and society everyone complains and bitches about into the government, country and society Canadians want.