The moment Peter MacKay opened his mouth, you could practically hear his Cabinet colleagues groan.
In but a few words on Wednesday, the Nova Scotia MP confirmed all of Stephen Harper's worst suspicions about what his ministers will do when left to their own devices. Why the Foreign Affairs Minister felt compelled to comment on the gas tax, contradicting the Prime Minister's assertion that it's not under consideration for reduction in the upcoming budget, is a mystery. But you can bet the gags in everyone else's mouths just got a little tighter.
Outside the parliamentary press gallery, this won't be received as a national emergency; it might even be welcomed. "It is difficult to get too worked up about Cabinet ministers' freedom of speech," Andrew Coyne wrote in these pages earlier this week. "Ministers of the Crown are supposed to sing from the same song sheet. It's called Cabinet solidarity, and it's an integral, if neglected part of our system."
Amen to that last part; if Paul Martin had abided by it, the Liberals might still be in power. But what Coyne and a lot of others seem to be missing is that there is a difference between keeping ministers on message and preventing them from delivering any message at all. And when the PM chooses the latter, it's more than just a pain for reporters; it's an affront to the rest of us, too.
Most of the gallery's grievances with the PM - where he talks, when he talks, to whom he talks - are the sorts of issues that only seem earth-shattering if you're in Ottawa, and remind the rest of us why we're happy not to be there. But the same cannot be said for Harper's efforts to ensure that his ministers refuse to discuss the files they're directly responsible for - a policy that makes a mockery of this government's commitment to transparency.
As the Post's Don Martin recently discovered when a planned interview with Environment Minister Rona Ambrose was cancelled last-minute, the PM is determined to have his ministers talk only about the Conservatives' much-heralded five priorities. So if you want answers on anything other than the Federal Accountability Act, GST cuts, child care tax credits, a medicare wait-times guarantee or the Tories' anti-crime measures - don't bother wasting your breath.
In theory, that sounds swell; at least Harper, unlike Paul Martin, doesn't claim that every single issue is of the utmost importance to him. But in suggesting that the government is doing only five things at any given time, Harper is playing us for fools.
Each fiscal year, Ottawa collects somewhere in the neighbourhood of $200-billion. Only a fraction of that will be spent on the Tories' five priorities; the rest will go to all of the other stuff the government quietly does - from big-ticket items (transfer payments, defence spending) to an endless assortment of smaller subsidies, grants, social assistance programs and so on. And while much of this effectively runs itself, ministers are confronted on almost a daily basis with questions about how to spend taxpayers' money, and what to do about perennial headaches that their predecessors grappled with as well.
One of the great misconceptions about government is that ministers' offices are entirely consumed with the issues that generate headlines. When I briefly went to work for an international trade minister, I expected a looming free trade deal that was generating protests at the time to be consuming the entire office. Instead, one staffer handled that issue while the rest toiled away on a host of others - among them softwood lumber, which was mostly floating under the radar back then, but affecting the livelihoods of thousands of Canadians.
Most of these issues escape the media's glare, because, frankly, they're boring. And no sane minister will randomnly begin volunteering information on them. But every once in a while, an intrepid reporter will start sniffing around them. And when directly asked about the decisions being made on Canadians' behalf, canceling meetings or dodging voicemails shouldn't be an option.
It's the PM's prerogative to vet every single response that comes from his ministers, no matter how minor. And he's welcome to get rid of ministers who insist on freelancing answers that veer from the party line. But to refuse to reveal what all those employees we've entrusted with our money are doing would show as much contempt for transparency as the Liberals ever did.
