Ethics

When the top three people in government, including the country's prime minister, are found guilty of ethics violations, it is safe to assume there is an inherent problem understanding what is right and what is wrong.

This does not bode well for a political party that ran for election on the promise of transparency and positive governance.

It was supposed to be “sunny ways,” remember?

Instead we got sketchy ways.

Bad enough that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau became the first prime minister in Canadian history blackmarked in such a manner, but then we had his No. 1 cabinet minister, Finance Minister Bill Morneau, being likewise convicted, thinking that not reporting that one of his many holdings happened to own a villa in the south of France was somehow not worthy of being reported.

It is not, of course. Revealing financial holdings and directorship ties are vitally important so that the public can actually trust there is no conflict of interest when important financial matters come to the fore.

Morneau, undoubtedly among the wealthiest politicians to ever work on Parliament Hill, breached that trust.

As for Trudeau, born of privilege and his financial future assured positively by a well-padded trust fund, he thought there was nothing wrong in jetting off to a Christmas holiday on a billionaire's private Caribbean holiday, with all expenses paid for by the Aga Khan whose charitable foundation gets millions annually in grants thanks to the government of the day and largesse of the Canadian taxpayer.

But this, too, was wrong and Trudeau now has a stain on his reputation that no other prime minister has.

Now, with just a year to go in the Trudeau Liberals' four-year mandate, we discovered last week, again through the independent parliamentary watchdog, that former fisheries minister Dominic LeBlanc, now Trudeau's go-to man in all things inter-provincial, has been found guilty of awarding a contract to an Arctic clam company in Newfoundland with direct links to a member of his wife's family.

They say fish stink from the head down, but that about Arctic clams, and the awarding of a quota change that takes $24 million away from one company and gives it to another with family connections?

We say that stinks too, and so did the ethics commissioner.

As we stated here in last week's editorial, the Trudeau Liberals have failed to deliver most of the promises they made.

And now this.

Come next year's election, it's worth remembering.