Last will and testament of Denis Desautels
JEFFREY SIMPSON Friday, February 9, 2001 Globe and Mail
http://www.globeandmail.com/gam/Commentary/20010209/COSIMP9.html
Auditor-General Denis Desautels offered a pearl of wisdom in his final report to Parliament. He wrote in that careful prose of his: "Historically, the tendency has been to justify government programs more by the resources they used than by the results they produced."
Right on. Governments love to make spending announcements. A billion dollars for this. Five hundred million for that. Fifty thousand for this or that. Headlines are made. Recipient groups are appeased, sometimes. On to the next announcement.
Unless some flagrant screwup subsequently catches the media's attention and is then amplified by the opposition parties -- or vice versa, since the media and opposition live in symbiotic relationship -- not much is then heard about the announced program.
It falls, therefore, to the Auditor-General years after the initial announcements to probe just how all that money is actually being spent. His reports usually make for sobering, even depressing, reading.
No one ever accused federal auditors-general of having a sense of humour. They may be knee-slappers at home, but, in their public role, they are more akin to the Grinch who stole the government's fun. They are apparently supposed to be stern and censorious, as Mr. Desautels has been for 10 years.
But he has been charitable, too, although the unsuspecting would not so believe. We in the media pounce on his condemnations while ignoring his commendations. Bad news sells, as they say, and his reports usually contain a full measure of that.
In his last will and testament, credit is given, where merited, to departments and even to the government as a whole for better practices. There have been improvements in monitoring programs, providing better on-line service to the public, and rewards built into the system for good management. "I have seen," wrote Mr. Desautels, "significant improvements in the management of government spending."
And yet, after listing various enduring failures, he asks, almost plaintively: "Why do these problems seem so intractable? Why do they persist year after year, despite express commitments to set them right?" Why indeed?
Part of the problem is that spending once announced becomes difficult to shut down. It can happen in times of fiscal trouble, such as the mid-1990s, but governments' instincts are often to push rather than shrink spending envelopes.
So a thousand strings from yesterday's commitments tie down any government's budget, the supervision of which is much less exciting and certainly generates many fewer announcements than offering something new. Taking something away always generates more political heat than offering something new.
A vast array of client groups depend on government programs, most of which are always pressing for more money for their cause. They, too, are much more interested in announcements of new spending than improved managerial methods. Interest groups never praise a government for good administration, only for increasing the amounts of money headed their way.
The Auditor-General was right, if a bit pejorative, in stating: "Establishing huge spending programs and then in effect putting them on autopilot is clearly not consistent with the principle of seeking to maximize value for the taxpayers' dollar."
There is no value, politically speaking, in admitting error. Everybody makes mistakes in their businesses, to say nothing of life, but in government it is as if no one ever errs. The trick is to cover up the error without anyone knowing one was made in case the opposition or media, or both, pounce on the government.
Why would anybody admit error anyway, when the opposition would brush the admission aside and demand a resignation or penalty? Parliament's adversarial structure means little charity and omnipresent partisanship. That shows up in committees responsible for government spending where debates flow almost always along partisan lines.
The Auditor-General may say that "enhanced transparency and accountability lead to stronger institutions and more effective government," but that is not what government is structured to provide. Ottawa pushes out a veritable Niagara of information, but none of it gets published without being thoroughly vetted to minimize the chance of embarrassment.
Mr. Desautels has done a difficult job in a balanced and effective way for 10 years. He has praised and chided where appropriate, and not shied from contentious issues such as exposing bad administration of aboriginal programs or screwups in the Transitional Jobs Program.
Things are better in government administration than a decade ago, but there is plenty of room for improvement -- as Mr. Desautels reminded us again and as his successor surely will, too. |
