Questions about how secret government documents went missing for five weeks without alarms being raised dogged Stephen Harper's government the day after Maxime Bernier was forced out as foreign affairs minister over the security breach.
The Prime Minister, in Paris on a European tour he began only hours after he announced Mr. Bernier's resignation, essentially declared the affair over – insisting that a Foreign Affairs Department review of the incident is enough, and rejecting an expanded probe.
Superficially that might almost seem reasonable - after all, no harm was really done, right?
Wrong.
This whole business calls into question the continence of the governing part with respect to classified documents. This is not just an "oops, I forgot them overnight" moment - not only did Bernier leave those papers for five weeks, it's pretty clear that he did exactly nothing to retrieve them:
“Why did it take the government five weeks to discover that documents were missing, and why did it take the government five weeks to ask a question either of the member for Beauce, the former minister, or of Madame Couillard?” Liberal foreign affairs critic Bob Rae asked in the Commons.
“Why do you sit on your duffs and do nothing for five weeks?”
Government House Leader Peter Van Loan insisted that the Prime Minister's Office was told about the missing documents only on Monday, “and after being informed of the situation with these documents, the Prime Minister acted.”
During that time, Ms. Couillard could easily have made as many copies as she desired. To dismissively say that "no secrets were breached" misses the point entirely. Those documents were classified for a reason, and both Harper and Bernier have shown us a blatant disregard for those reasons.
Further, it shows us the cracks and weaknesses in Harper's management style. In order to maintain the facade of being competent, Harper has to exact an ever increasing amount of direct control on his people, their actions and the actions of their associates. The question that the Bernier affair opens is not "what was breached?" (although that is a valid question), but rather we should be asking "what's next?".
Try as they might, the PMO cannot effectively control every action of the government and its ministers. Because the PMO has imposed such a strong grip on the ministerial and senior bureaucracy of all departments, you have to know that there's going to be more - it's inevitable. And next time may well be much more serious for Canada.
Canadians should not accept PMSH's blithe attempts to brush this mess off as a "non-issue" - just as AdScam demonstrated that the Chretien-era Liberals had lost sight of their responsibilities to the public, "L'Affaire Bernier" shows us that the HarperCon$ lack the flexibility, judgment and discretion necessary to safeguard Canada's interests.
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