May 16, 2010
Now that the Dexter government has brought in regulations to cover MLA expenses, I confess that I never really understood why the issue generated such flaming pillars of indignation.
True, the questionable expenses identified by the Auditor-General revealed a deplorable fat-cat mindset among MLAs of all three parties. But, as others have noted, the $73,500 spent on big-screen TVs, high-end cameras, office furniture, espresso-makers and other baubles amounted to just .00045% of provincial spending during the three years that were audited. And the expenditures weren’t generally illegal, just ill-considered.
To put it in perspective, if your household income is $50,000 a year the Nova Scotian average then the equivalent loss would be $22.50. It’s as if your kid had taken your old electric drill without permission, and lost it. You might give him a scandalizing — to use the good old Nova Scotia word — but you wouldn’t spend six months frothing and fulminating about it.
Yet that’s exactly what the editors and commentators did. At the same time, with few exceptions, they blithely overlooked a genuine scandal involving 700 times as much money, namely the systemic mismanagement of public-private partnership arrangements in the province’s schools. In that same report, the Auditor-General identified $52 million in losses on those contracts.
And the school contracts are about much more than money. They’re also about the safety and well-being of children. Employees at P3 schools were found to be inadequately trained — they lacked CPR and first-aid qualifications — and their backgrounds had not always been checked with the criminal or child-abuse registries. That’s an authentic scandal, which genuinely puts people at risk, but we heard precious little about it. Nor have we heard much — now or ever — about the other corporate welfare programs that cost us millions under the guise of tax holidays, incentives, payroll rebates and other giveaways.
So why did the MLA expense issue make commentators and citizens so furious?
Two things, I think. First, for most people there comes a point when large numbers cease to have meaning and simply become “a lot.” The mind slides away from enormous numbers like an ice-cube off a stovetop. Fifty-two million, five hundred million, five billion, who can understand such figures?
But we understand four laptop computers, or a $3000 TV set, or $8000 for a generator. And that’s stuff we want ourselves. (Actually, I don’t entirely understand that $8000 generator. I bought a pretty decent one for $700. Where does Richard Hurlburt shop?) In any case, we do understand $8000. We know how hard it is to earn that much. And so, paradoxically, we find it easier to get outraged about $8000 than about $52 million.
The other factor is a general sense of betrayal about our institutions and our leaders. Bankers, once the model of prudence and sobriety, now play craps with the world’s economy and demand that taxpayers bail them out. Members of Ottawa’s law ‘n’ order government allegedly cavort with cocottes and cocaine. Plagiarists infest the New York Times. The auto industry holds governments to ransom. The Commissioner of the RCMP pervaricates to Parliament. Trusted financial advisers steal client funds. The Roman Catholic hierarchy smells worse every week. And by some loopy logic, the government of Nova Scotia — in the middle of the MLA brouhaha — restores the title of “Honourable” to convicted fraudster Billy Joe MacLean.
Ye gods.
A year ago, Nova Scotians elected the NDP not because a wave of socialist fervour had swept through Nappan and Coddles Harbour, but because Nova Scotians were sick of governments they considered incompetent, self-serving and untrustworthy. Six months later they were furious to discover that MLAs from the new crowd, as well as the old, had been vigorously milking the public teat all along.
To sell your soul for a kingdom is grand opera. To sell it for an espresso-maker is farce. But now, having seen the issue dealt with, can we reclaim our sense of proportion? Yes, the MLAs snuck a pint of milk. But the proponents of P3 prisons, highways and convention centres are after the whole cow. Can we now pay attention to that?
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