Commentary
The Trudeau administration seems to have “jumped the shark” in choosing as interim ethics commissioner a close relative of a minister already caught violating the Conflict of Interest Act on behalf of… a relative. Columnist Andrew Coyne exclaimed “They are just trolling us now,” and it feels like appalling misjudgment on their part. But in a much larger sense I think modernity has jumped the shark with this whole business of ethics commissioners.
I don’t mind there being a Conflict of Interest Act, and at a slender 41 pages it’s not a labyrinth like, say, the Income Tax Act whose 3,415 pages, plus regulations (another 1,312 pages) incarnate P.J. O’Rourke’s “Beyond a certain point, complexity is fraud.” Everybody knows the Tax Act has no business being over 100 pages, but between perverse incentives in the public sector and popular delusions that government can micromanage the economy to promote prosperity, nobody has the slightest hope of getting it down to 1,000 or even trying….