Extreme disclosures

Premier Paul Okalik and his seat mates in the legislative assembly set a higher standard not so long ago for the disclosure of embarrassing information by MLAs and cabinet ministers.

As a result of ex-Speaker Kevin O’Brien being charged, convicted and fined $215 on a minor Liquor Act offence without telling anyone about it, MLAs must now report the sordid news immediately should they, too, run afoul of any law.

Fair enough. It’s their playground. They have the right to say who gets to sit on the swings and who gets to run whimpering home to mommy. The legislative assembly is a self-regulating institution, with wide-ranging authority over the conduct of its members, within the limits set by the Legislative Assembly and Executive Council Act of course. And even MLAs know that lawmakers shouldn’t break the law.

On top of that, Okalik set an even higher standard of disclosure for senior civil servants, with the “resignation” of Nora Sanders, the ex-deputy minister of justice. The talented and widely-respected Sanders got to play scapegoat, apparently because she didn’t tell any elected officials about O’Brien’s liquor charge, though there’s little evidence in the public domain to suggest she even knew about it.

Thankfully, the curtains have now fallen on Kevin O’Brien’s farcical fall from grace. May he live long and prosper in the kind of wet community he should have lived in all along, preferably served by a well-stocked beer store.

But guess what? MLAs now have a new disclosure issue to ponder.

This time, it’s Environment Minister Olayuk Akesuk, the MLA for Baffin South, who’s been caught withholding embarrassing information he’s required to make public. Under the Integrity Act, all newly-elected MLAs and cabinet ministers must write down what they own and what they owe in a publicly-available disclosure statement, for the sake of transparency and to avoid conflict of interest.

In a story broadcast earlier this week, Patricia Bell of CBC Iqaluit reported that Akesuk, in his latest disclosure statement, failed to mention $10,000 he owes the Cape Dorset Housing Association.

Akesuk, now a home owner, has been carrying that debt since before 1999. Shortly after Nunavut’s first election, Akesuk listed it in his first disclosure statement. Nunavut’s media – brutal sadists that we are – made much of it at the time. That likely explains the reason he gave for withholding the information this time around: to avoid embarrassment. Give him credit, at least, for being honest.

This, however, creates a big problem for Okalik, and for the legislative assembly. Having set their disclosure standards as high as they possibly can, what do they do now with Akesuk? Boot him out of cabinet? Boot him out of his seat?

After all, Nora Sanders didn’t break any laws, and she lost her job. Why shouldn’t Akesuk, who violated the terms of the Integrity Act, lose his job too? That isn’t our logic – it’s the legislative assembly’s.

We hope, however, that this time MLAs display some flexibility. They beat up on Kevin O’Brien long after it made any sense to do so. His political career was a bloated, decaying corpse long before they ever got to him. Now it’s time to show a touch of human kindness. And Akesuk, still a young man with a promising career, is a pretty good cabinet minister by Nunavut standards.

A vote of censure, with a stern warning attached, ought to suffice. Akesuk should keep his job. JB