Scandals plague our political history

By Janet Epp Buckingham and ChristianWeek | January 15, 2008

Scandals—politicians are brought down by them; opposition politicians thrive on them. We have just been subjected to yet another round of allegations against former prime minister Brian Mulroney.

I teach a course on the prime ministers of Canada and find it helpful to put these kinds of allegations in perspective. Sadly, Canadian politicians have a long and dishonourable history when it comes to scandal. It started with Sir John A. Macdonald and continues up to the sponsorship scandal.

A brief history of federal scandals shows an all-too-familiar pattern.

In 1873 Sir John A. Macdonald was forced to resign and went on to lose the 1874 election. It was called the Pacific Scandal.
Macdonald was alleged to have taken bribes from Sir Hugh Allen, the man who had the contract to build the Pacific Railway. The evidence included a telegram from Macdonald to Allen only days before the election asking for "another $10,000."

By the way, Macdonald was returned to power in the 1878 election and was prime minister until his death in 1891. Sure, Canadians punished Macdonald in 1874, but even the magnitude of the scandal did not take him out of politics permanently.

William Lyon Mackenzie King, Canada's longest serving prime minister, resigned in 1926 because his minister of customs was accused of taking bribes. King was in a minority government situation and was returned to power with a majority government. It was during the time of Prohibition and the minister of customs was taking bribes from distilleries which were producing alcohol to ship to the United States which had also outlawed liquor. Not great for Canada/U.S. relations.

In 1978, Francis Fox, then solicitor general, the cabinet minster responsible for law-enforcement, was forced to resign when it came to light that he had helped his mistress procure an abortion by forging her husband's signature on hospital documents. Fox was re-elected and back in cabinet only two years later.

Scandal prone

Both the governments of Mulroney and Chretien were scandal-prone. Ten of Mulroney's ministers were forced to resign over incidents as varied as visiting a strip club while on official government business to talking to a judge to influence the outcome of a case. There were allegations that Mulroney got kick-backs from a contract with Airbus to supply aircraft to Air Canada. Mulroney has flatly denied these allegations and there has never been any proof.

More recently, we lived through the APEQ inquiry—the "billion-dollar boondoggle" of the financial mess of HRDC, Shawinigate and, of course, the sponsorship scandal, all under Jean Chretien's watch. Chretien was alleged to have authorized police brutality against peaceful protesters at the APEQ conference and also to have used his influence to get government loans for a resort he had sold but hadn't been paid for. None of these brought Chretien down or even affected his popularity.

Only the sponsorship scandal resulted in the government being defeated, but by then Chretien had retired. This scandal bore the hallmarks of the Pacific Scandal. After the scare of the 1995 sovereignty vote, the government set up a fund to advertise Canada in Quebec. But there was little accountability for the money. Money was paid to Liberal-friendly ad firms, and favours such as funds for the party were expected in return.

Perhaps with on-going allegations of corruption and incompetence, Canadians get bored with scandal. Or perhaps they realize there will always be some bad eggs and some of those will become politicians. Or maybe we are cynical enough to expect politicians to be corrupt.

At any rate, one does ask what can possibly be accomplished by continuing to drag out the Schreiber/Mulroney affair. Certainly, little can be gained from a public inquiry on the issue. It is important that if Mulroney did something illegal, he be brought to justice. But there can be little justice in the media spotlight.

Surely, there are more important issues that deserve the media spotlight. The unrest in Pakistan alone makes this issue pale in comparison. Let the government get on with the important issues of the day and leave scandal-mongering to the tabloids.