Last month, the RCMP announced that it had found no basis for further investigation of Treasury Board President Tony Clement.
In 2010, a former Liberal MP had asked the RCMP to examine spending in Tony Clement's Muskoka riding. The former MP claimed that the spending on projects to ready Muskoka for the G8 summit somehow violated the law.
Over seven months, the RCMP reviewed the ex MP's charges. The RCMP found the charges groundless and have dropped the case.
Story over?
Maybe yes. But maybe not. The former MP herself, Marlene Jennings, previously the representative of the Quebec riding of Notre Dame de Grace-Lachine, will likely fade from public view. Yet she has bequeathed Canadian politics an ugly legacy -- unless Canadians act promptly and decisively to quash and repudiate that legacy.
One of the most impressive differences between Canadian and U.S. politics is that Canadians are much more reluctant to use criminal law as a tool of politics.
Make no mistake: Canadians despise corruption and expect legal action against those guilty of corruption.
But until the Jennings action, Canada maintained an effective distinction between bribe-taking and, say, locating a canoe museum in the riding of the prime minister of the day.
Marlene Jennings' contribution to Canadian political history was an attempt to blur that distinction: to make it a crime not to take money for your own use, but to get a project for your constituency.
Think of it this way: The Harper government's anti-recession fiscal stimulus contained a total of some 32,000 individual spending items. The items included a new subway line for Toronto and modernization of facilities at Canadian Forces Base Halifax. Toronto and Halifax are not exactly Conservative strongholds. Still, there is data suggesting that Conservative constituencies on average received more infrastructure spending than non-Conservative. (Just as Liberal constituencies did best in the Chretien years.)
One of those infrastructure items I happen to know well: the renovation of the VIA rail station in Belleville, Ontario. Belleville is represented by a Conservative MP, Daryl Kramp. Did MP Kramp advocate the case of the Belleville train station? If so, did he commit a crime?
It seems crazy to think so. Or anyway -- it did.
Happily for Mr. Kramp and for Tony Clement, the RCMP has agreed: an MP seeking projects for his or her constituency will remain decriminalized.
But the important thing to understand about these investigations is that even if the accused person prevails, the accused person still loses. The process is the punishment.
In a case like this in the United States, back in the 1980s, President Reagan's former Secretary of Labor, Ray Donovan, was indicted and prosecuted on corruption charges. The jury acquitted the former secretary on every count. When it was all over, and Donovan was told he was free to go, he plaintively asked, "And which office do I go to, to get my reputation back?"
Corruption is a standing danger in politics, to be vigilantly monitored and fiercely denounced. At the same time, false allegations of corruption can be very nearly as dangerous to democracy as corruption itself.
When scandal charges are hurled promiscuously, the public soon becomes inured to scandal. "Oh, that's just the way they talk," the public thinks -- and soon it stops listening altogether to all corruption accusations, the genuine as well as the bogus. Those who teach the public to shrug at corruption allegations are the genuine crook's best friends.
The honest politician does not shrug -- and of all the hundreds of politicians I've known in my life, I've never met a politician more honest than Tony Clement, a friend of 25 years' standing. The honest politician suffers from an attack on his reputation in a way that few people outside politics can imagine or understand.
But the outrage in the Jennings' accusation is not the attack on Clement. It's the attack on the norms of the Canadian political system. Possibly -- probably -- the complaint will prove a squib, a freak, a forgotten incident. But it could also prove a premonition, a harbinger, a warning of something new in Canadian public life.
In which case, this closed case may prove a very significant event -- and Marlene Jennings' otherwise not very notable political career will have culminated in one genuine if sinister achievement: Canadians will remember her as the person who imported American-style politics of personal destruction into the Canadian political ecology.
Follow David Frum on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@davidfrum
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However, I remember an opposition in the late 1990's that wanted to call in the cops for a range of perceived scandals. The current Prime Minister was a leader is much of the smears. Just as he continues to use partisan, personnel levers to attack the opposition.
Shortly before the 21st century began there was even the unusual circumstance of the RCMP announcing, during an election campaign, that Ralph Goodale was under investigation as the result of an opposition complaint. After the election he was cleared, no evidence of any offense was found.
Ms. Jennings was not responsible for the Americanization of Canadian politics. If one objectively looks at the origin of the current highly partisan, mudslinging political behavior I think you will see neo-cons reflecting their Republican friends.
Unfortunately while a clean bill of health from the RCMP may indicate lack of discovered criminality it may also indicate undo influence of the Prime Minister's Office on their appointees to the senior management of the Force to not agressively pursue the matter - a suspicion that unfortunately seems less than totally implausible.
Its amazing what family money can buy.
You attack his character but not even touch on the article he wrote. That....speaks to your character.
Not to put to fine a point on this, but I don't TRUST the RCMP to say or do anthing without the PMO's approval. I KNOW for a fact that Tony Clement spent this money illegally on his own pork barrel deals, I KNOW he tried to cover it up and did a terrible job. He's guilty but he'll get away wit hit because Harper has a majority and the investigators in his pocket.
All I have to say is that I remember the scandals of the Liberals a decade ago. Glad to see no matter what changes everything stays the same.
His and Bairds explanations of "oops, we forgot to include a line letting parliament know exactly where that money was going" is pure, un-adulterated horse manure. This is misappropriation, regardless of whether they actually "forgot", or simply "lied".
Excuse me while I don't take your word that Clement is the "most honest" guy you know. His actions speak louder than your written word.
It's good to know that Mr. Frum has learned this AFTER the 2006 general election. To have learned it before and to have penned a piece to that effect might have blunted the investigation of the Hon. Ralph Goodale that the RCMP gleefully broadcast to the press one month before the election.
I too want to raise the level of debate in this country, but there first must exist some capacity of self-examination. Neither right nor left nor separatist nor federalist, nor politician or voter, nor citizen or taxpayer is uniquely responsible for this decline.
Rather, we all happily accept it.
The money was scattered across Clement's electoral domain for local pet projects that had little or nothing at all to do with the summit.
Remember Clements comments on the long form census?
He attempted to sell making the long form census voluntary as Statistic's Canada's idea, when in fact it was the Harper Government making that decision.
Gee, what an honest guy.
"But the outrage in the Jennings' accusation is not the attack on Clement. It's the attack on the norms of the Canadian political system."
I think the real outrage lies in the attempt to promote the idea that business as usual is fantastic and the political system is perfect as it stands.
"But it could also prove a premonition, a harbinger, a warning of something new in Canadian public life."
Oh I hope so Mr. Frum, I hope so.
By the way, Clement can have his reputation back when he satisfactorily explains his actions to the Canadian people.
Peace. I'm sure you'll keep me guessing in the future!