The Bernier Fiascos & Resignation

[Greymatters]

Is that what you define as personality ?

Saying dumb things in a clear and confident tone of authority doesnt make them any less dumb...

 

[Edward Campbell]

This imbroglio points up the perils of cabinet making in Canada (and, to some degree in Australia, Britain, Germany and India, too).

The cabinet should be well stocked with men and women of considerable ability and integrity.

In Canada, especially, the cabinet MUST be full of:

• An appropriate mix of regional and linguistic representatives – regardless of ability or integrity;

• An appropriate mix of men and women – again, without regard to either ability or integrity;

• Politicians who must be rewarded for past service to the leader or the party – ability and integrity optional;

• Political foes of the leaders - based on Sun-tzu’s old adage “keep your friends close and your enemies closer” – ability and integrity not required; and

• Major political ’operators’ – like Allan MacEachen during the Trudeau era. In this case ability is often a given but integrity is frequently totally absent.

Sadly, for Canada, Harper must make his cabinets according to our well established traditions and he has pretty thin pickings from some regions.

 

[McG]

Five-week gap fuels outrage in Bernier affair
CAMPBELL CLARK and DANIEL LEBLANC AND BRIAN LAGHI
From Wednesday's Globe and Mail
May 27, 2008 at 10:00 PM EDT

OTTAWA, PARIS — Questions about how secret government documents went missing for five weeks without alarms being raised dogged Stephen Harper's government the day after Maxime Bernier was forced out as foreign affairs minister over the security breach.

The Prime Minister, in Paris on a European tour he began only hours after he announced Mr. Bernier's resignation, essentially declared the affair over – insisting that a Foreign Affairs Department review of the incident is enough, and rejecting an expanded probe.

But the scandal is likely to intensify calls for security checks of ministers' spouses and companions, and for control of classified government documents to be tightened.

Mr. Bernier resigned on Monday after admitting he left classified documents about an April NATO summit at the home of his ex-girlfriend Julie Couillard.

For weeks, after news reports surfaced about Ms. Couillard's past, the opposition had pounded the Conservatives with questions on whether her earlier relationships with members of criminal biker gangs posed a security risk – queries Mr. Harper rebuffed as intrusions into the pair's private lives.

Tuesday, the opposition charged that the government had ignored serious security issues – and expressed skepticism that classified documents could be misplaced for five weeks without raising government flags.

“Why did it take the government five weeks to discover that documents were missing, and why did it take the government five weeks to ask a question either of the member for Beauce, the former minister, or of Madame Couillard?” Liberal foreign affairs critic Bob Rae asked in the Commons.

“Why do you sit on your duffs and do nothing for five weeks?”

Government House Leader Peter Van Loan insisted that the Prime Minister's Office was told about the missing documents only on Monday, “and after being informed of the situation with these documents, the Prime Minister acted.”

He insisted it did not matter where they were, only that they had been misplaced in an unsecured location.

He said the Foreign Affairs Department will review the affair, and can call in other agencies – presumably the RCMP and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service – if needed.

Mr. Bernier, once a Quebec political star but now a liability, was said to be in Ottawa Tuesday, but did not attend Question Period in the Commons – and did not appear in public to respond to statements Ms. Couillard made in an interview broadcast on Monday night or questions about the documents.

As foreign affairs minister, Mr. Bernier would have had access to highly secret information about military assets and plans, and sensitive information about relations with foreign countries.

But it was unclear whether the information Mr. Bernier misplaced was top secret or less-sensitive briefing books – and Mr. Harper offered little more detail. He insisted there is no reason to believe there had been an actual leak, and rejected an expanded probe.

“Up to this point, there is nothing that would suggest that secrets were circulated or that our allies are concerned,” he told reporters in Paris, where he was to meet French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

“Regarding the content of the documents, I can only say they were briefing notes from meetings. It's a mix of classified and public documents, but the classified documents are classified, and I obviously do not discuss classified documents.”

Mr. Van Loan echoed that line, adding only that “they were all of course in preparation for the NATO summit in Bucharest.”

Highly classified material such as cabinet documents are numbered and tracked, and officials raise questions when a minister or official does not returned them, former Liberal ministers noted. Some highly classified papers are not supposed to leave government offices.

Many relatively routine documents get stamped classified inside the government, and some Conservative government figures and bureaucrats were privately skeptical that misplacing an anodyne briefing note, even one with a classified tag, would lead to a minister's dismissal.

Either Mr. Bernier left behind secrets far more sensitive than suggested publicly, they said, or Mr. Harper used a relatively minor incident to axe the minister over repeated gaffes and Ms. Couillard's embarrassing interview on Quebec television.

“It was the last drop,” a senior Conservative official said, adding that it's unlikely the documents contained extraordinarily sensitive information. “I don't think it was a military plan to invade Russia.”

Mr. Harper, however, insisted that Mr. Bernier's departure from cabinet had nothing to do with Ms. Couillard, and only the breach of “very serious cabinet rules” in misplacing classified documents.

“One of the key roles of government [is], you obviously don't disclose classified material and you certainly take adequate care to ensure that they are not disclosed.”

He ruled out expanding the probe to include Ms. Couillard's allegation in the interview that her apartment had been bugged.

“I have no reason to believe it's true,” he said. “And as we've said, private lives are private lives, and the government of Canada does not intend to get into the business of investigating private citizens.”

Melisa Leclerc, a spokeswoman for Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day, confirmed by e-mail Tuesday that CSIS was not involved in any bugging of Ms. Couillard's house. “As for the RCMP, I can't speak on their behalf, you'll have to call them directly,” she added.

A spokeswoman for the RCMP said it is RCMP policy not to discuss what may or may not be police investigations.

Michel Juneau-Katsuya, a private consultant and former CSIS agent, said the RCMP should take the lead in answering some of the questions that linger.

“Definitely, an investigation must go on now to find out the exact circumstances that took place, because one big, big question that remains: Why did it take five weeks for that lady to return those documents?”

With a report from Omar El Akkad

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080527.wbernier28/BNStory/Front/?cid=al_gam_nletter_newsUp

 

[Greymatters]

In this case ability is often a given but integrity is frequently totally absent. 

I believe the current popular term for this is "ethically challenged"...

 

[Edward Campbell]

And, see this, please, for an alternate theory of the events.

 

[stegner]

I think a set-up is a bit of an overstatement.  Did the Foreign Service know what was going on?  Could they have warned Bernier and Harper ahead of time.  I would answer yes to all these questions.  Why didn't they?  Not because they are full of partisan Liberals-but because Harper and Bernier have substantially alienated the Foreign Service (morale is now very low) and this was an opportunity for them to serve the Harper government their just desserts.     

 

[Colin Parkinson]

I think a set-up is a bit of an overstatement.  Did the Foreign Service know what was going on?  Could they have warned Bernier and Harper ahead of time.  I would answer yes to all these questions.  Why didn't they?  Not because they are full of partisan Liberals-but because Harper and Bernier have substantially alienated the Foreign Service (morale is now very low) and this was an opportunity for them to serve the Harper government their just desserts.     

When the Liberals ran the government, I absolutely despised them and their incompetence and likely corruption. However those were my personal opinions and as long as they were doing lawful stuff I never attempted to sabotage them or allowed a trainwreck without advising them of the possibility.

 

[Edward Campbell]

I think a set-up is a bit of an overstatement.  Did the Foreign Service know what was going on?  Could they have warned Bernier and Harper ahead of time.  I would answer yes to all these questions.  Why didn't they?  Not because they are full of partisan Liberals-but because Harper and Bernier have substantially alienated the Foreign Service (morale is now very low) and this was an opportunity for them to serve the Harper government their just desserts.     

I know I'm repeating myself, but the highlighted portion is crap; the very  worst sort of partisan, Liberal Party of Canada revisionism.

Yes, the morale in the civil service is low: because Stephen Harper, Paul Martin, Jean Chrétien, Brian Mulroney and, above all Pierre Trudeau made it so.

The downgrading of the foreign service began in about 1967 because Pierre Trudeau saw it, correctly, as an Anglophilic, closed shop - reserved for a tight coterie of Oxbridge educated small town Protestants. Trudeau thought, incorrectly, that it was anti-Québec; not true, but it was a strict meritocracy and the Québec education system in the ‘30s, ‘40s and ‘50s was unable to produce anything like enough people to give (then) External Affairs a broadly representative (25% Québecois) ‘face’ – and maintain its quality. So, he set about ruining it. Brian Mulroney continued the work – not because he cared overly much about quotas and Francophone ratios but, rather, because, based on the very real examples of e.g. Lester Pearson and Mitchell Sharp, he thought it was a hotbed of partisan Liberals. Harper is wrong to mistrust the civil service, so was Mulroney. It is a Liberal hotbed  but it is one which is, broadly, able to be non-partisan despite its general distaste for Conservatives. Trudeau, however, was more wrong because his actions were petty, ill considered and downright malicious.

The foreign service of Canada is, by and large, amateurish – that’s one of the reasons Gen. Hillier made foreign policy for a while. The blame for that rests, mainly, with Saint Pierre – the worst bloody disaster to hit Ottawa in the 20th century. The man was a petty, provincial, pseudo-intellectual poltroon - who set the country on the path to mediocrity because he, himself, was a third rate man with second rate ambitions and a first rate education.

 

[Fishbone Jones]

I think a set-up is a bit of an overstatement.  Did the Foreign Service know what was going on?  Could they have warned Bernier and Harper ahead of time.  I would answer yes to all these questions.  Why didn't they?  Not because they are full of partisan Liberals-but because Harper and Bernier have substantially alienated the Foreign Service (morale is now very low) and this was an opportunity for them to serve the Harper government their just desserts.     

I wish you would stop posting like you have supreme first hand knowledge of the inner workings of all the various government departments.

Try using phrases like "In my opinion" or "I think it likely that...." or "From what I've read, it may be possible that...". Oh, and try posting something like a link, if you have any, to back up your assertions.

 

[GAP]

I know I'm repeating myself, but the highlighted portion is crap; the very  worst sort of partisan, Liberal Party of Canada revisionism.

The foreign service of Canada is, by and large, amateurish – that’s one of the reasons Gen. Hillier made foreign policy for a while. The blame for that rests, mainly, with Saint Pierre – the worst bloody disaster to hit Ottawa in the 20th century. The man was a petty, provincial, pseudo-intellectual poltroon - who set the country on the path to mediocrity because he, himself, was a third rate man with second rate ambitions and a first rate education.

One of these days you're going to have to sit down and give us your real views or PET and pals..... ;D

 

[Edward Campbell]

One of these days you're going to have to sit down and give us your real views or PET and pals..... ;D

I know, all his self restraint wears on one.

 

[Rodahn]

I wish you would stop posting like you have supreme first hand knowledge of the inner workings of all the various government departments.

After viewing his profile, I would suggest that he probably has a better knowledge of the inner workings of the government than the majority of the members of this forum

 

[stegner]

The foreign service of Canada is, by and large, amateurish – that’s one of the reasons Gen. Hillier made foreign policy for a while. The blame for that rests, mainly, with Saint Pierre – the worst bloody disaster to hit Ottawa in the 20th century. The man was a petty, provincial, pseudo-intellectual poltroon - who set the country on the path to mediocrity because he, himself, was a third rate man with second rate ambitions and a first rate education.

No argument here.  I agree fully with you that it was a sad day when our Oxbridge educated Foreign Service was considered politically correct because they were not Francophone-though many of them spoke flawless French.  PET ruined Canada's civil service.  My argument is that it is precisely because Harper used Gen. Hiller to make foreign policy that has most recently alienated the foreign service.  This is clearly outside of DND's purview.  How would DND feel if Canada's foreign service started taking on the DND's roles.  Moreover, we have many capable foreign servants that are being ignored. 

I wish you would stop posting like you have supreme first hand knowledge of the inner workings of all the various government departments.

Try using phrases like "In my opinion" or "I think it likely that...." or "From what I've read, it may be possible that...". Oh, and try posting something like a link, if you have any, to back up your assertions.

Mr Recceguy,

I have at last time I checked six friends in Foreign Affairs.  I am only going by what they tell me.  It's not unusual for people living in Ottawa to have friends in a plethora of government departments and agencies.  The people on this forum are intelligent enough to decide on my credibility or lack thereof. 

One of these days you're going to have to sit down and give us your real views or PET and pals..... Grin

For the record I am not fond of Trudeau as he was a giant ass.  Not the biggest fan of Chretien, but he was much better than the alternative of the time (i.e Campbell, Charest, Day, Manning) with the exception of Joe Clark, the only native Albertan PM in Canada's history.  Once again,  John Diefenbaker was my favorite PM. 

 

[Fishbone Jones]

Mr Recceguy,

I have at last time I checked six friends in Foreign Affairs.  I am only going by what they tell me.   It's not unusual for people living in Ottawa to have friends in a plethora of government departments and agencies.  The people on this forum are intelligent enough to decide on my credibility or lack thereof. 

Your hearsay evidence still amounts to just that.....hearsay and rumour. I also have a plethora of acquaintances in the public service, and as much as I trust and accept what they say, it would be foolish to make judgements and statements on the inner workings based on their opinion only.


Edit for spelling

 

[stegner]

You're hearsay evidence still amounts to just that.....hearsay and rumour. I also have a plethora of acquaintances in the public service, and as much as I trust and accept what they say, it would be foolish to make judgements and statements on the inner workings based on their opinion only.

Sounds good.

 

[Edward Campbell]

This imbroglio points up the perils of cabinet making in Canada (and, to some degree in Australia, Britain, Germany and India, too).

The cabinet should be well stocked with men and women of considerable ability and integrity.

In Canada, especially, the cabinet MUST be full of:

• An appropriate mix of regional and linguistic representatives – regardless of ability or integrity;

• An appropriate mix of men and women – again, without regard to either ability or integrity;

• Politicians who must be rewarded for past service to the leader or the party – ability and integrity optional;

• Political foes of the leaders - based on Sun-tzu’s old adage “keep your friends close and your enemies closer” – ability and integrity not required; and

• Major political ’operators’ – like Allan MacEachen during the Trudeau era. In this case ability is often a given but integrity is frequently totally absent.

Sadly, for Canada, Harper must make his cabinets according to our well established traditions and he has pretty thin pickings from some regions.

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s National Post is Don Martin’s take on my cabinet making in Canada thoughts:

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/canada/story.html?id=550824

Harper's Cabinet quandary
Too much talent in West, not enough in Ontario or Quebec

Don Martin, National Post

Published: Friday, May 30, 2008

OTTAWA -The material is there to rebuild a decent Cabinet in the wake of foreign affairs minister Maxime Bernier, who became a global media sensation as the forgetful former boyfriend who breached security by leaving classified documents with an old flame.

But as Stephen Harper prepares to hammer together an election-ready front bench to digest briefing books over the summer -- hoping they will read them rather than lose them -- the Prime Minister faces an interesting challenge.

He has the right talent in all the wrong places.

Every name raised as ripe for replacement comes from Ontario or Quebec.

Every name worthy of elevation to bigger and better duties comes from Alberta or B. C.

As Mr. Harper prepares to move the boxes for the third time in 28 months, the need for regional balance ensures any dumped weaklings will be replaced by the weak, while strong MPs from heavily represented areas will be sidelined.

It is, of course, unfortunate that location is everything in choosing Cabinet material, particularly given Quebec's Cabinet-quality gene pool is but a puddle while Alberta has a diving tank of talent.

And it's odd how Mr. Harper's Cabinet architects tend to place a much higher priority on geography than gender balance.

Some whispers insist this will be a relatively small changing of the chairs. Given the way the Prime Minister's people manipulate media messages, that could be true or merely a calculated move to calm high-ambition expectations from oft-overlooked backbenchers.

It's true shuffle speculation is only interesting for the 5% of Canadians who actually care which minister answers the Prime Minister's orders on what file.

But the hole left by Mr. Bernier's forced resignation hands the Prime Minister a decent opportunity to invigorate an inner circle that seems stale.

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty of Ontario, despite performing a decent rebound from the income trust flip-flop, is fending off a rear-guard push from the government's best minister, Industry's Jim Prentice, to switch places.

Given that Mr. Flaherty furiously resisted precisely this move 10 months ago, it's doubtful he'd accept it now, which has given rise to speculation he could claim a "promotion" as Mr. Bernier's replacement, particularly if interim Foreign Affairs Minister David Emerson opts not to seek re-election.

But the most serious optics issue is how to deal with Quebec's under-representation now that native son Bernier has been benched at the back. About the only bulb showing much in the way of political brightness comes from a rookie named Christian Paradis (no, you've never heard of him), holding down the modest role of backup to minister for agriculture.

But if life was fair, more from the West would get in. Consider just a partial list of the talent locked out by having seats in over-represented regions:

Northern Alberta's Kevin Sorenson, Vancouver area MP James Moore and two-term B. C. MP Russ Hiebert clearly rate a shot at bigger things.

There can be no excuse for continuing Calgary's Diane Ablonczy's second-string status as a parliamentary secretary for finance, a task she's managed with flawless efficiency and enthusiasm.

Edmonton MP James Rajotte was among the very first to rally to Harper's side for the Canadian Alliance leadership, a fact seriously overdue for reward beyond his respected performance as a key parliamentary chair. Alas, he calls Edmonton home.

Calgary's Jason Kenney just turned 40 and deserves a birthday bump into a full Cabinet job, having been the go-to troubleshooter on thankless files such as Brenda Martin's imprisonment in Mexico, and he even has Liberals envious of his connections to ethnic groups. Not a chance. Too much Calgary already.

And while she's apparently happy being invisible after the firestorm of fronting the government's environmental agenda, Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Rona Ambrose deserves another shot at a front-line gig, particularly given the pathetic under-representation of women in significant portfolios.

But as Stephen Harper casts his eye over Conservative benches for prime Cabinet material, he can only conclude there's too much deadwood in Ontario and Quebec, while all the nails needed to keep things together are out West.

dmartin@nationalpost.com

The old, old problem is that regional representation (which is Ottawa’s secret code for Québec’s fair share) must always and without fail trump good government and/or the national interest.

So it remains for Prime Minister Harper and, given his stranglehold on most of Western Canada and Liberal strength in Ontario and Atlantic Canada and Québec’s current state of political flux, it means that Québec MPs, no matter how shallow and stagnant the talent pool puddle may be, will be looking for the big offices, big limos and big pay raises that come with a front row seat at the cabinet table.

 

[stegner]

This is too funny.  Martin totally ripped off Andrew Coyne's comments on the CBC program At Issue with Peter Mansbridge. Martin along with Gregg, Coyne and Hebert appear almost daily on the show. 

 

[Edward Campbell]

This is too funny.  Martin totally ripped off Andrew Coyne's comments on the CBC program At Issue with Peter Mansbridge. Martin along with Gregg, Coyne and Hebert appear almost daily on the show. 

Not really; very similar comments were made by many, many observers when the first Harper cabinet was worn in early in 2006. They mirror despairing comments made when Martin and Chrétien and Mulroney and Trudeau cabinets were sworn in, too - in Trudeau's and Chrétien’s cases regarding the need to recruit poorly qualified Westerners, including appointed senators, and overlook some excellent Québec and Atlantic Canadian MPs.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

From what little I have seen in the foreign media about this, is purely a focus on her ample cleverage and the faint possibility that Canadians are exciting enough to have an actual sex scandal.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s Ottawa Citizen, is another take, this one from Prof. Wesley Wark:

http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/opinion/story.html?id=ac58cfda-b05d-488b-93eb-c2fbbaddddf9

Wesley Wark . This scandal has legs
Despite the current media frenzy, the real story awaits: a thorough investigation is needed, as is an overhaul in the way secrets are handled

Wesley Wark, The Ottawa Citizen

Published: Friday, May 30, 2008

The government would like nothing better than to sweep the whole Maxime Bernier mess under the rug and move on. The opposition parties, in a rare moment, are united in being determined to keep the affair alive. They hope to find just the right angle of entry for the stiletto aimed at a vital body part they have named "Harper hubris." But what is the public interest?

The prime minister was spared the need for greater clarity about this question by lady-luck - a pre-planned quick swing through Europe. This left Peter van Loan, the government House Leader, with the thankless task of keeping his anger in check and his remarks strictly on message in the face of a relentless onslaught in the Commons. Being on message means an endless repetition of two statements: a) the private lives of ministers are not the country's business (pure hogwash in the Bernier case) and b) that the PM did the right thing in demanding the minister's resignation the moment that he learned that classified government documents had gone missing. The trouble was that they had gone missing for five weeks in the residence of a woman with a colourful, shall we say, past.

Beyond the fireworks in the House of Commons, there is the quite astonishing degree of global media coverage of the Bernier affair, no doubt a product of a slow day and a belief that Canadian politics are on the whole squeaky clean and boring.

Yet the real story awaits, as a security investigation unfolds in the Department of Foreign Affairs. The provenance of this investigation is, itself, intriguing. In his letter of resignation offered on Monday, Mr. Bernier announced that he had asked his department to conduct a "thorough investigation of the situation." Here was a curious last act before turning out the lights on his brief and entertaining tenure as minister of foreign affairs. It may have been well-meaning on Mr. Bernier's part. Or it may not. Whatever the motivation, it presented Mr. Harper's government with a bit of a poisoned chalice.

The government can neither disavow such an investigation nor make it anything less than "thorough." Even if they wished to, the alternative - bowing to the opposition's call for a full public inquiry - would be anathema. So, we will have a "thorough review." What does this mean, and what is at stake?

The departmental review needs to uncover the facts of this bizarre matter in a properly detailed and forensic manner. The questions are obvious ones: what classified documents exactly went missing (we know they were part of a briefing book for the NATO summit in Bucharest in the spring)?; how did they go missing and who is responsible?; why was the document loss not reported for a period of five weeks?; and finally, what security vulnerabilities might have resulted?

Beyond this "just the facts, ma'am" approach, there is the need to draw some lessons about proper security procedures for a minister and his/her staff when handling classified documents and, perhaps more importantly, a need to remind ministers and their staffs in no uncertain terms about their obligations under the Security of Information Act.

There is a need to re-think the adequacy of the current regime for ministerial security checks, which are done once, in a hurry, and no doubt in a fairly cursory manner, prior to the appointment of a minister. In particular, such checks need to be beefed up whenever a minister occupies a portfolio where the handling of classified (and sometimes highly secret) material is routine, as it is for the minister of foreign affairs, whose department includes intelligence and security activities.

There is a need to reassure allies, once the facts are in and the lessons promulgated. This will be one of those days when ambassadors earn their pay.

Above all, there is a need to reassure the public that the Bernier affair is not symptomatic of a general air of carelessness in the handling of classified documents by the current government. We have no reason to think it is, but the reassurance is needed all the same.

The Harper government will have to eat some humble pie and present the results of the Bernier investigation to Parliament, as Liberal MP Bob Rae suggested when the affair first broke. It might even be a good idea to take this opportunity to conduct a thorough second look at our Security of Information Act. This bastard piece of legislation was snuck into the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2001 and has never had the close scrutiny it deserves. The new-look official secrets act is bureaucratically unworkable, chilling in terms of its impact on freedom of speech, and now hobbled by a court decision to strike down its leakage provisions as unconstitutional. If left unamended, it is going to get us in trouble one day.

Just in case you thought the Bernier affair was a classic two-day wonder, well, it isn't.

Wesley Wark is a security expert and visiting research professor at the University of Ottawa's Graduate School of Public and International Affairs.

© The Ottawa Citizen 2008​

I agree with Prof. Wark re:

• A need for better, more thorough security screening of ministers – even if that means they cannot ‘see’ everything, for some time; and

• A need for better information handing procedures.

Better, more thorough security screening must, perforce, apply to spouses, close relatives, friends and associates, too – especially in the case of ministers selected for some posts. But: where can, where must it end? Can we envision a case where the security services could doubt the loyalty or discretion of the elected prime minister – and who would or should give a damn if they do? I reiterate: when the people of this, that or the other riding elect their member of parliament they tell us, all of us, fellow citizens and denizens of the dark corridors of the security service, too, “This is a person we trust.” That may have to be good enough; in many most almost all cases it may be as good as we can get.

Information handing is much, much easier and should be investigated, reported upon and reformed quickly and thoroughly – and I have no doubt, none at all, that a thorough investigation will find a need for urgent reform.

I also agree with Wark that this story has “legs,” but for the reasons ColinP gives: it is salacious. Sex sells soap.