Petty Thieves and Crooks

The recent weeks of one kafuffle after another in Ottawa certainly give a wide spectrum of the entitlement mentality in our government. From Dingwall and his package of gum to the Liberal henchmen in the PMO, we see people taking money from the public purse with what so far seems to be impunity.

It appears that if you are caught with your fingers in the cookie jar, all you have to do is threaten to sue and you will be rewarded instead of punished. Dingwall will sue for severance pay because he felt he was forced to resign his job because people were questioning his spending habits. Chrétien will sue to try to save what he seems to think is an untarnished reputation. Alfonso, our former ambassador to Denmark, wants millions. It seems it is a personal disgrace to be booted publicly out of a patronage job after all he did for us with the Sponsorship program.

How does this entitlement mentality get started in the Public Service? Moreover, let us be honest, it happens in the private sector as well. It may begin with taking home a few company pens or pencils and a pad of notepaper – just in case you get a phone call about work and have to make a note. After all, it is business, not personal use. Then comes that first trip away from the office and you are given a travel allowance. It is amazing how far it is to Toronto when you get a mileage allowance! It is okay to forget to deduct that side trip into Newmarket to the Upper Canada Mall because after all, you did spend a couple of extra hours talking company business at the bar last night and you are not on the overtime system and you should have gotten a bigger raise last time.

The meal allowance of $50.00 a day will barely cover a meal in the land of the Big Smog – everyone knows that. Just because there was a free continental breakfast and lunch was provided by the conference does not mean you have to scrimp on dinner! Besides, you do not need receipts for anything under $20.00. In addition, that restaurant food is not the same quality you get at home so the company ought to reimburse you for your indigestion. Man, they must have walked that cow all the way from Alberta.

Since you are required to have transportation for your job, and maybe you will have to carry something heavy or dirty, you just had to have that half-tonne truck with the boat trailer hitch on the back. The miserable mileage allowance they give you in no way covers the cost of running a truck, so you inflate the weekly mileage to cover the company’s stingy allowance. No one ever checks the mileage anyway. Besides, if you did not need a vehicle in your job, you would be driving an Echo like everyone else.

Working in an atmosphere that tolerates these small acts of thievery makes it easy to accept free lunches from a salesperson, tickets to the Blue Jays or Raptors. At Christmas, a mysterious box arrives on your desk and even though you know that the set of ratchet wrenches looks very much like the ones you just saw in the window of a favourite local supplier, no one knows where they came from – wink, wink, nudge, nudge. While the people on the shop floor are getting boxes of donuts and chocolates for a year of good work, the boss gets a plain envelop from an enterprising businessperson containing $5,000.

This begins to sound like Liberal Party in action, but it is happening all the time. It is just that in politics, we seem to think it should be different. We wonder how the atrocious spending slips by the accounting clerks in government when our own bookkeepers turn a blind eye at the petty thievery going on in the office. The Auditor General brings in reports every year about the shenanigans or Shawinigans in Ottawa and little heed is taken. The corruption and patronage continues. Brian Mulroney ranted and raved at Turner over the patronage appointments that Trudeau apparently foisted on Turner, but Mulroney made more blatant appointments than Turner could ever have dreamt.

The culture of entitlement has made petty thieves of us all, whether it is stealing little items from the office or taking that few extra minutes on break time, or chatting on the phone with family or friends while being paid to attend to the work piling up on the desk, we are lured into thinking it is all right. Income and sales tax? You mean you will charge me less to shingle my roof or pave my driveway for cash? Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Yet when the big crooks appear on the scene, we are quite indignant.

Then there those people who just let things slip by, like the former Finance Minister, now Prime Minister. Sure, he was not in charge of the PMO because Jean would not let him through the door, but he knew, he knew. Sorry, but absolution by the Judge just does not cut it, Paul. By the sin of omission, you are painted with the same brush as the rest of the old caucus. Justice Gomery’s report will send up a few sparks in the smoke screen that seems to have become our political norm, but it will slowly smoulder away.

Things will settle down as soon as the election is over. In fact, one could safely bet that by the time the election comes around we will have lost all of our outrage over Gomery and the little hundred-thousand dollar lawsuits that will fall out of it. Our selective memory will kick in and keep us from thinking too deeply on the past performance of the petty thieves and crooks. We will conveniently forget about the little misdemeanours and mismanagement of our tax dollars.

After all, how many of you can remember the outcome of the lawsuit the City had against the Conservation Authority? At least the Mayor had the good sense to put the cost of the rail lands on our tax bills so we would remember that one.