A short while ago, the Ford government's plans to establish a healthcare superagency -- standard conservative policy for cutting costs -- leaked. There was a firestorm. The Fordians immediately fired the civil servant who leaked the draft legislation to the NDP. Robin Sears writes:
Of all the many hypocritical hobby horses in political life there are few that can match this dichotomy. The Ford government was badly bruised this month when their somewhat hair-raising ideas of “health care reform” were sent to the NDP. The cabinet documents were not entirely congruent with the government’s publicly declared objectives, to put it delicately.
Despite being exploiters of many a brown envelope in opposition, the government’s reaction was surprisingly predictable, if unimaginative. The two favourite crisis comms defences for responding to a leak are: “Early thinking only, not finalized, wait for the real policy announcement …” Then you attack the whistleblower. Calling in the cops was a more unusual additional cudgel, most often employed by another leaky administration to the south.
Neither of those defences work well. When it comes to confidential documents, Sears writes, there is a simple test which should be applied:
There is no point in attempting to make your government leak proof with the threat of heavy boots — it will have the opposite impact, by enraging your staff and public servants. Far better to apply the tried and true, “front page test”: “What would my partner/parents/children think if they saw this on…”, when drafting.
Unfortunately, that is a test that is seldom applied. Politicians continue to insist on silence -- the SNC-Lavalin debacle is a more recent example of the problem. What Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis wrote decades ago is still true: Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
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