Dwight
Ball's effort to dump the Carla Foote appointment on Chris Mitchelmore is akin
to leaving the house in the charge of a kid whom you wouldn't trust near a hot
stove.
Ball
is not credible on the issue. Anyone who knows anything about government in
Newfoundland also knows that the kind of cronyism represented by Foote's appointment
minimally requires the boss' approval. The attribution by then Rooms' CEO Dean Brinton
to the Departmental Deputy and Mitchelmore, to the effect that the Premier "had
offered Carla Foote the position", is simply an acknowledgement of the
chain of command.
The
notion, anyway, that a Minister can arbitrarily move an associate secretary out
of the Cabinet Secretariat, for which the Premier is responsible, is absurd. If
anything else need be said that Ball is not telling the truth, just remember that
the appointment had his support from the beginning. If it ever occurred to him that
the appointment constituted a flagrant abuse of the Rooms' independence and of
its hiring procedures, he had no intention of acting to reverse it.
Secondly,
the Rooms has a governance problem which starts with its Board of ten appointees.
They have a duty to ensure
that the institution's practices and procedures, including with respect to hiring,
conform to best practices which would disallow political interference and
ensure that all those who applied for the communications position - or any
other - are assessed on the basis of merit rather than on their fealty to the
Liberal Party.
In
this case, the Board had additional reasons to interfere in the appointment of
Foote. She did not have the qualifications which the Rooms posted for other
applicants. Her salary exceeded by nearly $50,000 the amount allocated to the
position. The Rooms is an institution constantly short of adequate funding and
relies, in part, on public donations. Did not even one Board Member consider any of those issues or understand that it was their duty to protest and, if necessary, resign?
Had
they learned nothing from the debacle that characterized the hiring of "an
agency of record", in 2018, described in an Uncle Gnarley post entitled
"The Rooms says don't apply if you are a critic of the government"?
That
is unfortunate in a Province where governance within any of our institutions is
found to be abysmally absent. Who
doesn't remember the Tory Government's refusal to install oversight of the
Muskrat Falls Project and, when it did, chose a "fake" process. At
the Rooms, with the exception of one government representative, the Board of
Directors are ostensibly independent. Why should the public
not, now, think them partisan
hacks?
Of
course, the problem of the Rooms' hapless Board is a separate issue from the
behaviour of a decidedly hapless Premier. This is time when honest
and decisive leadership, embodying norms and values that we associate with
decency and ordinary good government, is incredibly elusive. Yet, the Premier sends the public a message
that the merit principle is defunct and that citizens lacking minimum
credentials, but are properly politically connected, qualify for his standard
of public administration!
In
the meantime, the public service continues to be downgraded. Strong public
servants are replaced with, in the words of one wit, "obsequious,
invertebrate functionaries."
The Opposition must strongly repudiate such terrible
ethical standards which are debasing both the principles and the practices of
public administration. They should not let Premier Ball use the diversionary
tactic of conducting an independent review on transfers of public servants and
executive compensation. This is silly and unnecessary anyway. The Opposition should keep the
pressure on for a reversal of the Carla Foote appointment and for some honesty
from the Premier.
This
is an opportunity for them to show leadership and to demonstrate mettle that has been absent from Opposition Parties for a long time. The risk of
triggering another General Election is not an excuse for holding back when the very integrity of government has been challenged says none other than an Officer of the House of Assembly, the Citizen's Representative.
On
display in the House of Assembly is corruption at the highest level and of a
Premier unfamiliar with the truth.
The
Opposition should not think that the Carla Foote affair can be exorcised by a
reprimand or a mere mea culpa. They must face down the Premier's blatant dishonesty . While Ball deserves to be banished as Premier, minimally this debate must end with a
"confidence' vote in him and his Administration.
What about Mitchelmore, who "grossly
mismanaged" his obligations with respect to the Code of Conduct according to the Citizens' Representative? Well, the kid whom you would't let close to a hot stove doesn't know that he should have already resigned.