Averting Their Eyes From Scandal Since 1993, Ottawa's Press Corps Has Been Taking A Nice, Long Nap

Things are looking mighty bleak for the Liberals this week. So naturally, it is the perfect time for the media to open a lengthy discussion of the flaws and foibles of Conservative leader Stephen Harper.

You've been hearing for a week now that Harper is too angry and/or too hesitant, too opportunistic and/or too ideological, that his platform is too right wing and/or too much of a Liberal copy cat. Harper's eyes are too blue, his hair too neatly combed, his skin too white, his style too cerebral.

Some might wonder whether these imperfections in any way compare to the revelation that the Liberal government of the past dozen years was in effect running a political scam in the province of Quebec. Some might note that Harper, icy though his eyes may be, never pressured a government-owned bank to lend money to his business associates. They might observe that he never manipulated government contracts to direct business to a firm run by his chief of staff's boyfriend. They might protest that Harper has never used political connections to enrich himself.

But of course it's precisely because the case against the Liberal government is so black and damning that we are hearing all these petty, peevish criticisms of Harper. It's awfully hard to defend a government as guilty as this one. Those in the press who shudder at the thought of a Conservative prime minister have had no choice but to go on the offensive.

Yet pettiness and peevishness have their uses too. The past year has been educational for Canadians. They are learning a great deal about the real nature of the Liberal Party of Canada, a party they have trusted too much and too long. They are learning the true character of Jean Chretien and Paul Martin and the inner circles of those men. They are learning how recklessly their tax dollars are spent and how selfishly they are used. That's all important information.

Perhaps Canadians will now also learn something important about the way in which political information is reported from Ottawa--and (more important) not reported.

Those of us who were around for the Mulroney years remember how swift and eager the press was to discover and investigate scandals. But since 1993, the Ottawa press corps has taken a nice long nap, and even now, with Gomery on television every day, they are napping still.

Canadians still do not know, for example, the full truth of the Shawinigate story, or the HRDC scandal, in which $2-billion supposedly intended to help the unemployed went AWOL. The Chretien/Martin government insists the money is not missing, but merely misplaced--the same excuse provided at Gomery. Is there anybody in Canada willing to take this excuse at face value? Two billion dollars is a lot of unaccounted money to flow through a bureaucracy. Might not some of it have stuck to somebody's fingers--or been redirected into a party coffer? Isn't it time to take a second look?

Closer to the centre, there are the nagging questions about the connections between Paul Martin's finance department and the Earnscliffe lobbying/research group now being studied by the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee. I live hundreds of miles from Ottawa. Even at that distance, I keep hearing troubling stories about the alleged links between the two. Surely those on the scene have heard similar rumors too?

Maybe journalists have painstakingly checked out these rumors and decided there was nothing to them. Or maybe they could not be bothered.

Ottawa, after all, is a very small town. The Ottawa press and the Liberals may not always like each other, but they belong to the same community, attend the same parties, marry each other, and find individual career advancement in similar ways. The media and the Liberals live in Ottawa; the Conservatives are just visiting.

The editors and commentators, by contrast, often live in Toronto, chattering to one another from within an ideological cocoon in which abortion and gay rights matter far, far more than the trifling matter of whether the country is governed by scoundrels.

The Italians have a saying: "Italy is a country of many mysteries, but no secrets." There have been many secrets in Ottawa--but maybe not so many mysteries. The truths revealed by the Gomery inquiry are truths that many Canadians already suspected: that the Liberal government existed to serve itself, not them; that their money is being wasted and stolen; that the press too often reports less than it knows, or anyway, could find out.

And there's one truth more: Canadians have the power to demand better. They have always had it. The question before Canadians today is not whether they like Stephen Harper's haircut. The question is: Will they allow themselves to be bamboozled by those who wish to continue abusing the nation's trust--and distracted from what really matters by journalists willing to tolerate that abuse of trust for dubious motives of their own?