Accountability in Canada: Endangered, yes, but not quite extinct
Line readers provide evidence that consequences can, in fact, still happen in this country.
Recently, Line editor Matt Gurney wrote a column about accountability in Canada. In short, he wrote that it was basically dead. The only thing that seems to work, he wrote, is fear of U.S. President Donald Trump. When he gets angry about something, we’ll take action.
Gurney also issued a challenge to the readers. He asked for you to write in with examples of when there were actual consequences for failure in the public sector. The examples were few and far between, but we did get some. In the spirit of raising your hopes, The Line would like to offer this up as an exhibit of real accountability in Canada.
It’s endangered, yes, but not quite extinct yet.
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And now, back to the accountability …
A few notes: we received a series of submissions about public officials who were fired after committing crimes or being convicted of crimes. We chose not to include those, as we felt that fell a bit outside the scope of a collection of stories about political accountability. That’s different from criminal liability. (There is one interesting exception, though, below.)
We also received some suggestions where voters gave a politician the boot after a failure (Jodi Gondek’s defeat in Calgary’s last mayoral election received several entries.) We chose not to include those, either — that’s a form of accountability, yes, but it seemed a bit too far off the mark of what we were looking for.
So here’s what’s left. Enjoy, if that’s the word.
PEOPLE WHO GOT FIRED:
In 2016, Health Canada suspended Dr. Norman Viner, the head of its clinical trials unit. The issue was that Viner was allegedly double-dipping and continuing to work at a hospital and a long-term care home while he was supposed to be on the Health Canada clock. Health Canada proceeded to fire Viner a year later, thus beginning a long legal journey. The case was complicated; Viner denied any wrongdoing, said his supervisors knew he was still practicing medicine, and called the entire thing a witch hunt. In the end, he appealed his firing to the federal labour relations board, which ultimately sided with Health Canada and upheld the firing.
Read about it in the Ottawa Citizen.
In a much more recent example, the Manitoba government just reportedly fired Bobbi Taillefer, a former teacher’s union leader, who had been appointed by the provincial government to be the province’s first commissioner of teacher conduct. What the province apparently did not know was that Taillefer had moved out of Manitoba. Like, by a lot. All the way to Florida. We can understand the appeal, but Premier Wab Kinew recently announced that the government had let Taillefer go.
Read about it via Global News.
This is an odd one, but back in 2020, Calgary fired three officials, including the general manager, from the city’s parking department. All that was ever reported officially was that they’d been let go. CBC News reported that there had been an internal whistleblower complaint about a “serious” matter. That’s all we ever found out.
Read about it, as much as there is to read, at the CBC.
Staying in Alberta, back in 2023, the provincial government fired the mayor and half the city councillors of Chestermere. The details are complicated, but in short, there had been complaints to the province’s municipal affairs ministry about a dysfunctional municipal government. A provincial inspection found problems and issued directives to address them. And the local officials, reportedly, simply kind of ignored them. And were fired. Byelections were held and all the fired officials were replaced.
Read the whole, strange story in the Calgary Herald.
This probably could be a whole sub-genre, but consider this a representative example. In 2021, the board of the London Health Sciences Centre, a large hospital in London, Ontario, fired its CEO, after it was revealed that he had repeatedly travelled to the United States on personal business during the pandemic-related travel restrictions. The trips weren’t illegal, and the executive, Paul Woods, said that he quarantined after every visit. The trips to the U.S., where his family lived, took place when the hospitals in London were being hit by outbreaks. The staff and public were outraged, and Woods was fired.
You can read about this one in the CBC.
Interesting note: This might undermine the entire notion of accountability, but not for nothing, it wasn’t long before Woods was running another major Ontario hospital, where he remains today.
This is honestly just kind of a weird one: a few months ago, the Canadian Coast Guard fired a captain who failed to answer a distress call. (Answering distress calls is a big part of why we have a Coast Guard.) Lou Callaghan, the captain, agreed that his vessel had received the distress call from a fishing boat in distress, but insisted that he was simply waiting to be ordered by his superiors to initiate the rescue. The Coast Guard, for its part, said that Callaghan had a duty to respond to the call for help immediately, not to wait for orders to do so. This one also went to the labour relations board, which sided with the Coast Guard.
PEOPLE WHO RESIGNED:
When the “Freedom Convoy” rolled into downtown Ottawa in February of 2022, it is fair to say that many people in positions of authority did not exactly cover themselves in glory. High on that list was Peter Sloly, then the chief of the Ottawa Police Service. As the protest dragged on and the people of Ottawa were something close to besieged, Sloly appeared to have no plan to remove the truckers from the downtown core. What he did have was a hot temper and there were soon stories of repeated bust-ups with senior staff. Or, as the CBC put it: “Multiple sources have told CBC News that Sloly allegedly belittled and berated senior Ottawa Police Service officers in front of their colleagues, and has failed to put forward a solid operations plan to end the crisis.” Sloly left the force mid-crisis and everyone seemed to think this was a good idea.
This one is more about personal accountability than an indication of the strength of our institutions, but in 2023, John Tory, in his eighth year as mayor of Toronto, was revealed to have been in a lengthy affair with a young staffer. He was 68 at the time, and married. A number of councillors (and Ontario Premier Doug Ford) wanted Tory to remain in his job, but he stepped down six days after the story first broke. There had been speculation that Tory might attempt a comeback with a mayoralty bid this fall, but he has said he will not run for his old job.
The Toronto Star has the story here.
Sometimes these stories can be infuriating and funny. So it was with Rod Phillips, who as Ontario finance minister in 2020 whisked himself off to a two-week vacation to St. Barts, right as his boss was pleading with everyone to stay home during the early days of the COVID pandemic. The punch line is that his social media accounts posted a photo of him sitting by a roaring fire, wishing his constituents the best of the holiday season, while he was (presumably) sitting by a pool. This wasn’t just embarrassing for the Doug Ford government at home, but it received international press, because everyone enjoyed a story about public officials breaking COVID rules. Phillips resigned from his ministry upon his return, was appointed back to cabinet in a different portfolio the following year, but later resigned as MPP and didn’t seek re-election.
Read about it on the BBC (!) here.
THE ONE CRIMINAL EXCEPTION WE CHOSE TO INCLUDE:
Sometimes accountability takes different forms. In the build-up to the 2011 Ontario election, the Liberal government of Dalton McGuinty cancelled plans for two natural-gas power plants in the Toronto suburbs and moved them to Sarnia and Napanee, where they would be less likely to bother Liberal voters. The auditor-general found the decisions, to protect a couple of safe seats, could end up costing Ontario taxpayers more than a billion dollars. McGuinty would eventually resign, although the Liberals would win the subsequent election with Kathleen Wynne as leader. His former chief of staff, meanwhile, was convicted of improperly deleting computer records relating to the scandal and sentenced to four months in jail. David Livingston would serve 35 days of his sentence in a correctional facility before being released to finish the rest of his time “in the community.”
Here’s the Toronto Star on how that one wrapped up.
We know this isn’t comprehensive! But it was an interesting slice of perspectives from our readers. We hope you enjoyed them, and that the years ahead provide us many, many more examples of a return of an immune system to our country’s political life.
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These are interesting. We have some accountability for criminal malfeasance or breaking the letter of the rules. But no examples of just plain old "spend a bunch of money within the rules and accomplish nothing" incompetence.
Which explains a lot
I respectfully posit, Mr. Gurney [I assume it is the male editor rather than the female editor who wrote the column - oh, dear, can I legally distinguish between male and female now?], that yes, there is an element of accountability in the items that you enumerate. But.
But what? It seems to me that there is no accountability associated the "offenses" that you list unless they became in some way publicly known and/or controversial. The lesson learned is not that one should be of good behavior but rather that one should ensure that the conduct does not become public.
Now, John Tory's example of self-defenestration is a good example of him recognizing the unacceptability of his behavior but we don't seem to see any evidence of consequences being imposed by, say, a government (or similar institution) when they come upon something that is not public but is clearly unacceptable.
What would satisfy me? Well, perhaps a thunderbolt out of the blue where a government (or some such authority) would publicly discharge folks who had clearly stepped over the line but that offense was not previously known. Now, to the extent that there may be consequences, it seems to me that they are all covered by NDA's and related mutual backside covering so that no one can either know or be embarrassed. All the better to allow one to go on to subsequent employment, you know. And to "offend" once again.
Or, perhaps, someone being fired for simple inadequate performance. You know, like an NHL coach. Publicly. Humiliatingly. In the view of the world so that one can "understand" that meeting the expectations in a contract is not optional.
Perhaps I am simply too cynical. Or perhaps not.