OTTAWA - The man who investigated the sponsorship scandal says Prime Minister Stephen Harper seems to have abandoned any commitment he once had to transparent government in favour of a top-down style that centralizes power in his own hands.
John Gomery, in a wide-ranging interview marking the second anniversary of his final report, expressed dismay that the federal Conservatives have ignored his key recommendations for reform.
"I have to tell you, I'm very disappointed," Gomery said from the farm in Havelock, Que., where he now lives in retirement.
"I worked so hard, and I got other people to work hard, and we gave very serious thought to what we were recommending. I thought it deserved a debate."
Instead, said the former judge, most of the political and bureaucratic changes he proposed fell into a "black hole" of indifference or were rejected out of hand.
His verdict on the Harper government is harsh: "They were glad to see the end of the commission (of inquiry), and they'd like me to disappear . . . . I'm a pain, I'm a bit of a menace."
Ironically, it was Gomery's scathing indictment of the previous Liberal government that was widely credited with paving the road to Tory power in the 2006 election.
In his first report in November 2005, Gomery concluded that millions of taxpayer dollars had been skimmed by Liberal-friendly ad agencies, and some of the cash had flowed back to the party in under-the-table kickbacks.
Though he found no personal wrongdoing by Jean Chretien, he held the Liberal prime minister politically responsible for letting things go off the rails - a finding that so incensed Chretien he went to court to try to quash it.
Gomery followed up with a second report - released two years ago this Friday - in which he offered a recipe for changing the way business is done in Ottawa.
Among other things, he called for:
-An end to the prime minister's exclusive power to appoint deputy ministers, the senior bureaucrats in every federal department.
-Curbing the authority of the Clerk of the Privy Council, the prime minister's bureaucratic right-hand man.
-More money and staff for the Commons public accounts committee to boost its role as watchdog over government spending.
The overall goal was to reverse a growing trend - decades in the making - toward centralization of power in the hands of the prime minister and his inner circle, a situation that critics saw as an invitation to the abuse of power.
It was a goal that Harper appeared to share when he was in opposition, says Gomery. But since he took power "there's more concentration of power in the Prime Minister's Office than we've ever had before, which is quite remarkable in a minority government, but he's pulled it off."
Gomery also points to the Tory failure to revamp the Access to Information Act to make it easier for journalists and other citizens to pry documentation from the bureaucracy.
"The government was saying at the time (of the report) that transparency was very important and that they wanted to improve transparency. In practice it's been an exact reverse."
The Conservatives did expand the access law to cover many federal institutions that had previously been exempt. But that didn't improve the actual mechanics of the process, in Gomery's view.
There are still lengthy delays in releasing information, and too many sensitive files end up "on some minister's desk or in the Privy Council Office someplace."
"They've politicized it, and it's not supposed to be politicized."
Gomery also slammed Harper for abandoning the effort to install a new appointments commissioner to ensure that merit - not patronage - would be the main criterion in naming people to the boards of Crown corporations and other key posts.
Harper proposed to give the job to Gwyn Morgan, former CEO of EnCana energy corporation. But opposition MPs voted him down, contending he had a Tory bias and citing public remarks he had made linking gang violence to Jamaican and Asian immigrants.
The next step, in Gomery's opinion, should have been to propose another candidate - just as U.S. presidents do when one of their nominees to the Supreme Court is rejected by Congress.
"The prime minister said, 'Well, if you don't approve of my appointment then we'll just drop the whole thing.' . . . The idea that it's 'my way or the highway' is not exactly democratic."
Harper's defenders note that he came to power with his own agenda, embodied in the federal Accountability Act, which included reforms to party financing, lobbying, protection of whistleblowers and other matters Gomery didn't address or mentioned only in passing.
"Obviously that was our main response to ethical issues," said Mike Storeshaw, a spokesman for Treasury Board President Vic Toews.
Some of Gomery's most controversial recommendations sparked opposition that wasn't confined to Conservative ranks.
More than 60 politicians from all parties and retired senior bureaucrats signed a letter to Harper in March 2006, urging him not to give up the authority to appoint deputy ministers or gut the powers of the Clerk of the Privy Council.
They also objected to other proposals that would have put the onus on public servants to ride herd on cabinet ministers on ethical matters.
That would turn things upside down, they said, and let unelected bureaucrats set policy rather than the politicians who are ultimately answerable to voters.
Harper issued a written reply in December 2006, saying there were "a number of areas where my government finds itself unable to agree with Mr. Justice Gomery." He singled out the proposed changes to the Clerk's role and anything that would make bureaucrats, rather than elected ministers, directly accountable to Parliament.
Gomery acknowledges his critics had some valid points. But he says that's just one more reason there should have been vigorous debate about his recommendations.
"There was this letter signed by very eminent people, and that apparently brought the matter to a close. I don't consider that was a debate, I consider that was simply the status quo reasserting itself."
In delivering his recommendations on Feb. 1, 2006, Gomery asked the government to tabled a detailed response in Parliament within 24 moths. With time due to run out Friday, he's still waiting.
"I thought that at least they would have the courtesy to say, well, we're not going to respond . . . It's just as though my report doesn't exist."
