THE RAMIFICATIONS OF HOLDING GOVERNMENT TO ACCOUNT: PUBLIC DISTRUST AND BITTERNESS

At the outset of this Wrights Lane post, I want to make a concession, admission or confession...Your choice, but it is really all three.

Truthfully, I know a little bit about a few things and very little about a lot of things. That, I think, makes me an average Canadian citizen.

I rely heavily on personal interest research and information gleaned from a variety of sources. My education is ongoing because I care about what is going on around me.

And, that is why I elect to place trust, faith and yes, even admiration, in those possessing superior knowledge and abilities. I listen intently trying to understand financial experts, engineers, scientists, medical practitioners, lawyers, even politicians, but most of what they say goes completely over my head; due primarily to an inability to comprehend jargon entrenched in verbal discourse on respective subjects of interest.

Resultantly, I frequently find myself shaking my head in wonder and left asking the obvious question: "What did he/she just say?" Still I watch and listen, all the while hoping that at some point I will experience a break though enabling me to be on the same wave length and level of  understanding.

In most cases, I humbly chose to accept what "experts" or those in the position of authority and leadership have to offer because I am in no way qualified to question otherwise. That is, until such time as they are proven to be wrong or guilty of poor judgement and I am left weighing pros and cons of evidence made available for public discernment through media sources and ultimately to separate wheat from the chaff of abundant discourse.

This is all by means of preamble to a subject that has troubled me for some time -- accountability, as it is applied specifically to governmental management of the affairs of our diverse country, coast to coast to coast.

We need accountability in all walks of life. It keeps us on our toes and honest in all endeavors -- personal, governance and business to name but a few. The problem I have with accountability though is when all-too-frequently opposition parties resort to bitter outbursts of feigned indignity and criticism coupled with half truths, all designed to embarrass and bring government to account. The government, in turn, fights fire with fire in an attempt to defend their position and actions taken, or not taken. There is absolutely no civility in our provincial legislatures and House of Commons these days and it is at the expense of public trust in all levels of government...and that worries me. With trust eroded, I too am left losing respect in general and not knowing who or what to believe. Sadly, I am not alone.

A rather disturbing recent Edelman poll revealed that only 43 per cent of Canadians say they trust their government — down from 53 per cent a year earlier. And 80 per cent of Canadians feel the country's elites are out of touch. Increasing hatred and militancy is the resultant and extremely dangerous byproduct.

Now, back to the subject of holding governments to account. Succinctly, I fear that un-civil criticism in the guise of "holding to account" has contributed in large measure to the public discontent that we are experiencing in Canada today.

It seems as though all's fair (acceptable) in love, war -- and politics -- these days. But that does not make any of it right. Surely there is a more humane and civil-- way of arriving at mutual resolve.

Accountability has recently been described as ‘the uber-concept of modern times’. In politics it has certainly become ubiquitous. The Cambridge University Press alludes to daily demands for someone or something to be ‘held to account’. The routine response to a whole range of political issues is a call for ‘more accountability’. Yet this political usage of the word is relatively recent. What began life as the language of the counting house, as dry as financial dust, has been converted into the stock language of the political and constitutional arena. Even more interestingly, what was once a means by which medieval monarchs could count the assets of their subjects has been transformed into the means whereby modern citizens can hold to account those who rule them.

So pervasive has the language of accountability become -- and so synonymous it now is with every desirable attribute of democracy and good government -- that the concept is in danger of losing all critical meaning. For example, it would be a very brave politician (or commentator) who would dare to suggest that good governance might even benefit from somewhat less accountability in certain respects.

This is not the place to explore all the conceptual complexities of accountability, but it is necessary to pin down a core meaning. It involves a relationship between an account-holder and an account-giver, so that the latter has to provide explanations to the former, with the possibility of consequences. Obviously legal accountability is a ‘hard’ form of accountability, with enforced consequences, but the primary focus here is on the political accountability that is intrinsic to democratic politics and which takes a variety of forms.

It is intrinsic because the idea of democracy carries with it the belief in the popular control of power. This in turn acts to prevent abuse of power and corruption, promotes learning and nourishes legitimacy. I understand that as a given.

Accountability is therefore both the lubricating oil and the practical toolkit that gives effect to the idea. In the case of political accountability, the relationship is usually described as that between principal and agent. The principal is the electorate and the agent is their elected representatives. There then follows a chain of delegation, with ministers accountable to the elected representatives and civil servants accountable to ministers.

Now all that is in a perfect world of respect and unity of cause within and without party lines. In Canada today we are far past any of that and civility in government has become a forgotten attribute never to be recovered, shy of a miraculous Act of God.

It all boils down to governments clinging to power at all costs and opposition factions determined to upset the apple cart...That's the name of the game in politics today. Public good gets lost in the bitterness of the conflict.

Meantime, small inconsequential tax-payer guys like me are left not to reason why, but to literally do and die, unseen and unheard in the vast wilderness of Canada. Ignorant and confused, an outsider looking in for the most part, but nonetheless happy to live in a country like Canada with all its warts, wrinkles and inherent shortcomings of elected officials who I trust are trying their best in spite of themselves and habitual rhetoric that I have difficulty accepting, let alone understanding.

Go figure!

Merely stating it as I see it, without apologies.