WRITING ON THE WALL by Henry E. McCandless

Canadian citizens accepted thousands of preventable deaths and wrecked lives from contaminated blood in the 1980s, and later the needless deaths of 26 Nova Scotia coal miners in a disgraceful mine. We tolerate wrongful imprisonments across the country and police forces inadequately managed, motivated and trained for interventions. We accept the corporation-driven medical treatment fixation rather than install rules for prevention. We don’t require the standards of care for seniors they are entitled to see met, and we don’t require facilities to uphold seniors’ dignity. We accept government ideology transferring public money to corporations and we don’t uphold the precautionary principle for the environment and our natural resources. We accept quiet decline in the competence of Canadian officials and don’t question their training and motivation. We tolerate Canadian legislators steadfastly sidestepping the application of public accountability even though it is a society imperative. We allow them in their ritual processes to refuse to grasp the basics of management control for what they oversee, something essential to running their jurisdictions competently. The list goes on and on – and for all countries.

In 1796 George Washington made an important observation: “I am sure the mass of Citizens in these United States mean well, and I firmly believe they will always act well, whenever they can obtain a right understanding of matters...” It is not clear whether the majority of Canadian citizens seek a right understanding of matters, or simply hope that someone else will fix things, while complaining about them after the fact.

Yet by holding to account fairly and relentlessly, citizens can control what goes on.

Holding to account means extracting the information from authorities that citizens need to gain a right understanding of issues they should deal with. Given the information, and not just data, citizens can more sensibly act to commend, alter or halt what authorities intend. Thus the essence of public accountability is the obligation of authorities to explain publicly, fully and fairly before the fact what they intend and why, the performance standards they intend for themselves and those they oversee, and later what resulted from what they did and how they applied the learning available from it. We have failed to install this basic obligation.

Most people think accountability is responsibility, the obligation to act (a related but different obligation). The fraudulently-titled federal Accountability Act is a prime example. Or they see it only as explanation after the fact, from financial statements, court cases and inquiries. But financial statements are only a part of public accountability and after-the-fact attention doesn’t prevent harm, injustice or irreversible environmental damage. We don’t get full and fair public explanation of the intentions of the directing minds of authorities such as governments and the agencies they control because the requirement, if seen headed into law, is apt to turn authorities’ knuckles white. (Think of the classic BBC’s “Yes Minister”.) The lobbying against it would be over funded.

Citizens should not trust an authority that does not explain publicly, fully and fairly what it intends, and why. As a former Provincial Auditor of Ontario put it, “If you know it, you can report it.” Authorities certainly know their underlying agendas.

When the Board of the Vancouver Island Health Authority acted to close the Cowichan Lodge facility in Duncan and turn over its operations to the private sector with no credible intention explanation before the fact, the spokesperson for 80,000 Cowichan-area citizens told the Directors at a public meeting, “You have lost the public’s trust.” This ought to have been devastating to the Board members sitting there, facing her. Given the Board’s purposeful ignorance of its public accountability, it likely wasn’t.

So why does holding to account work? If elected or appointed officials must explain their intentions, reasons and performance standards within their authority, knowledgeable organizations can publicly shred identified intentions reasonably seen to lead to harm. As well, independent audit can attest to the fairness and completeness of what the authority says. Fear of consequent loss of credibility with the public will exert a self-regulating influence on what the authority intends.

“Checks and balances,” monitoring and performance audit after the fact don’t create this self-regulating influence. Review boards for professionals review processes but don’t examine and report whether performance such as professional medical diagnoses and treatments met the standards of diligence that citizens are entitled to see met.

Citizens can act in two ways. They can require their legislators to install in the law the requirement for full and fair public accounting by all authorities affecting the public in important ways. That allows auditors general to audit compliance with the legislation.

As well, citizens can form citizen accountability groups to hold authorities publicly to account for their responsibilities in the issues of concern to the groups. They can set out publicly, for the relevant authorities, what they see as the nature of the public explanations the authority should be giving for its intentions, reasons, performance standards and results. Alongside external auditors, the groups can then publicly assess the fairness and completeness of the authority’s public explanations.

If we don’t do this, we carry on with activist citizens putting in terribly long hours, largely after work, to try to overturn intentions and actions seen as unfair -- with the intentions not being given public challenge before the fact, and with officials who plan and carry out the intentions getting salaries and pensions for it.

As to the type of public reporting needed, George Washington’s observation fits with the 1989 Massey Lectures of Dr. Ursula Franklin, who said: “Whenever someone talks to you about the benefits and costs of a particular project, don’t ask what benefits? ask whose benefits and whose costs?”

Thus we can develop a useful form of public accountability explanation we can call an Equity Statement (EqS). The statement sets out, for proponents of an intention that would affect the public in important ways:

1. who would gain what benefits from what is proposed, and why they should, in both the short and longer term;
2. who would bear what costs and risks, and why they should, in both the short and longer term; and
3. assuming the proposal were to go ahead, who would be required to meet what standard of performance and public explanation of how responsibilities are being carried out.

The proponents for an intention -- and those opposed -- can each draft an equity statement for public challenge of an intention. This can range from property developers and residents to governing and opposition parties in a legislature. The elected representatives making the decisions would account to their constituents if they disregard what a valid composite equity statement logically points to as the decision.

Whether a local municipal property development application, an intended “private-public sector partnership” or other executive government policy or regulation intention, a validated equity statement would give citizens information they should have to do their oversight duty. To be effective as a self-regulating influence on governments’ intentions, equity statement reporting would have to be assessed by auditors general for its fairness and completeness and by knowledgeable public interest groups.

As a society imperative, public accountability is non-partisan and isn’t political policy. In serving the accountability relationship between government and the legislature it is therefore open to auditors general to recommend to their legislators that equity statements by the executive government be made the law. But it is up to citizens to require their elected representatives to install it.

Henry E. McCandless is General Convenor of the Citizens’ Circle For Accountability (www.accountabilitycircle.org) and the author of A Citizen’s Guide to Public Accountability: Changing the Relationship Between Citizens and Authorities (Trafford 2002). From 1978 to 1996 he was a Principal in the Office of the Auditor General of Canada.