Gazebos and the governing morality

Lawrence Martin, Opinion, The Globe and Mail:

What sort of punishment should be handed out to a cabinet minister who, judging by an auditor-general’s report, was found in clear breach of federal policies on accountability?

Should he be shuffled to another post? Should he be dropped from cabinet entirely? Or should he, as appears to be the case with Treasury Board President Tony Clement, be allowed to remain in his post, a post wherein he stands watch over the very type of transgressions of which he is accused.

To refresh the memory, he operated a $50-million government program that was sold to Parliament as an infrastructure fund to reduce border congestion but instead was used as a treasure chest to pretty up his riding with parks, walkways, gazebos, etc. Safe to say that the array of projects, part of the G8 Legacy Infrastructure Fund, didn’t diminish Mr. Clement’s electoral prospects. Funds to improve the G8 summit site in Huntsville, Ont., were well within reason, but the lucre was spread far beyond the Muskokan municipality.

Opposition critics, meanwhile, smell scandal – a cover-up of a $50-million pork-barrelling operation. In the late 1990s, when the Liberals ran grant programs like the Transitional Jobs Fund without leaving much of a paper trail, outraged conservatives railed at the Chrétien government for almost two years running.

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