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Canadian Government and Its Path to Despotism Increasingly, stories and articles are coming to light about the secretive dealings going on behind the closed doors of our government. Although Canada has long been viewed and portrayed as an honorable, ‘clean’ and upstanding nation, evidence is proving that Canada is worse off ethically than many countries around the world. As said by columnist Valerie Gibson: “A British politician Is usually caught with his hand up a woman’s skirt while a Canadian politician Is usually caught with his hand In the till. Government and corporate corruption has long existed in our world. As humans, we have always done our best to get what we want, even if that means disregarding our moral conscious for a while. The Canadian government is no different, although many of us view It as an organization of moral truth, there are many publicized situations in which our government has been caught ‘red handed’ In the process of conducting backroom deals. Because of this constant presence of corruption in the world’s governments, businesses, and civil societies, an organization was formed in 1993 named Transparency International.
Now present in over 100 countries Transparency Internationally goal is to bring about change through corruption awareness and eventually eradicate corruption from our world. Annually, Transparency International posts their Corruption Perception Index, ranking countries In order of how dishonest their public sectors are observed to be. From 2010 to 2011, Canada fell from 6th place to 10th place on this index, begging the question: what has our government done to deserve this surprising drop in rank?
In an article released by The Globe and Mail in early 2011, it said “In a report to be released Tuesday, the group singled out Canada s the only GO country that has been stuck at the bottom of bribery-fighting rankings since TTL began issuing Its reports in 2005. “Unless there is strong political will to take this on as an Important Issue, Canada and other countries that are laggards will remain behind. ” said Hugest Label, the chair of Transparency International and a Canadian who served as a deputy minister in Ottawa for 19 years. It is important for Canada’s reputation. We need to move from where we are now” Canada’s reputation is exactly what is at stake here. It is difficult to imagine this country as anything but he upstanding nation is has long been portrayed as and if it is truly on the road to losing this Image, steps need to be taken to rekindle our upstanding Image. Despite the fact that they have been useless, there has been a small effort by the Canadian government to put anti-bribery laws in place.
The majority of this effort took place in 1998 in the form of the Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act which mass put in place to detect, convict, and fine companies that take place in fraudulent bribery. Since the Act was passed however, only one company has ever been invoiced. Even our neighbors across the border have a better track record than we contrast, the United States has prosecuted more than 200 companies and individuals, many of them “a veritable who’s who of the corporate world,” according to Peter Dent, partner at Dolomite and Touch??, ALP who also sits on the board of Transparency International. It is naive to think that you cross that 49th parallel and somehow we’re pure as the driven snow,” he said. “Canada does not have a great reputation when it comes to the enforcement of white-collar crime. If it’s not taken seriously by overspent, it won’t be taken seriously by the corporate sector” Most Canadians like to think of themselves as a superior country to the USA, but in reality, when it is so clear we are lagging behind them in corporate bribery, there is no Justification for our feelings of superiority.
Transparency International says that the majority of Canada’s flaws in anti-bribery laws can partially be blamed on how ambiguous and nonspecific they are. Although there are clear laws against “terrorism or child sex tourism offences – allowing authorities to go after a Canadian abroad even if there is no direct link to the crime in this country. Transparency International also warns against the lack of resources that are available to RACE investigators who are often called away from their corporate corruption investigations and re-assigned to other projects.
The Rasps financial crime chief superintendent, Todd Sheen, agrees with Transparency Internationally conclusion, saying that his unit of 14 investigators is currently trying to handle 23 separate cases of foreign bribery. What needs to happen is for the Canadian government to invest more people and effort into investigating the corruptive actions of both Canadian corporations and what is going on in the government itself. This is one of the key changes that need to happen in order for corruption and bribery reduction to be properly achieved. Cause of the fact that new corporate and government corruption cases are coming to light, the question must be ask, what does this signify about our future government, the country, and its citizens? The first step a dictatorship (and through it, despotism) is loss of regulation of the government by its citizens. Throughout history, there are numerous examples of governments that developed into dictatorships and Newer no longer managed by the citizens. It was Thomas Jefferson that said “when a overspent fears its people, there is liberty, and when the people fear their government, there is tyranny’.
I think this strongly relates to the challenge facing Canadians that we need to become more aware of what our government is doing and how they can prevent corruption. Shouldn’t we as Canadians be concerned about that fact that we do not know what is happening behind the closed doors of our government, the decisions being made that affect us? Overall, it is plain that Canada is failing in its meager attempts to regulate and reduce the widespread instances of bribery and corruption taking place every day Nothing the country.