Editorial

About responsibility

Some days you just have to wonder. First how anyone raking in that size of six-figure salary ($210,000 for those who haven’t heard) would have the unmitigated gall to attempt it. And secondly, how he got away with the less-than-scrupulous shenanigans for so long before someone noticed.
And finally, how he managed to keep a straight face while indignantly declaring his innocence. And at the same time accepting four months salary as severance.
Perhaps some would feel the need to give George Radwanski credit for something. But for the life of us, we can’t see why anyone would give Canada’s former privacy commissioner anything but a very bright pink slip – and perhaps a warning to not let the door smack him in the posterior on his way out.
For the past three years Radwanski has been quietly going about his job – and doing a good job, if we’re to believe anything he says. Unfortunately, however, the privacy commissioner was, at the same time, keeping very private the cost of his luncheon meetings – some of which soared to the $400 mark for two individuals. Now that’s what we’d call ‘privacy’ to the nth degree. And instead of ‘fessing up when someone finally uncovered the bottom line on the receipts and went public with the information, he attacks the people who finally set the matter straight. Calling the Members of Parliament who investigated him unfair jackals, Radwanski said he was never anything but honest and forthright. And pure as the driven snow, we’d hazard a guess. But wasting Canadian taxpayers’ hard earned cash on such frivolities (bottles of wine worth hundreds of dollars apiece) should not just warrant a simple dismissal. And it definitely should not be accompanied by any type of severance.
As well as accepting a salary that smacked of sloppily disguised patronage, Radwanski was taking us the cleaners with his expense accounts. And somehow, some way, some day (soon, we’d hope) someone should be recouping some of that cash on behalf of the Canadian public.
‘Oops, he goofed, good thing we caught it,’ doesn’t cut it. If we truly have a responsible government, then someone should take the beast known as ‘responsible’ and collect the over-rings from Radwanski’s bank account.
But since we’ve never seen the words ‘responsible’ and ‘Radwanski’ used in the same sentence, maybe we’re dreaming in colour if we think that could happen.

Bravo, Southshore!
It took a couple of hours of information sharing and a few heated words. But when the dust cleared, the majority of Southshore residents who took part in the M.D.’s meeting at the complex last week finally agreed -- a municipal sewer line was is inevitable. And even desirable.
Our guess is that most already knew that the lines are necessary. (If they don’t, they haven’t done or witnessed any deep excavations along the south shore in recent months. That is, they haven’t seen what George Snider so eloquently referred to as ‘seams of brown stuff’.)
That the province will soon force the issue is a given. And as Councillor Karl Gongos pointed out, “We’re being forced to do it. And this is the best system for the ratepayers.”
Snider and his cohorts at the Municipal District of Lesser Slave River and Associated Engineering have done their homework. They’ve become the experts, and we applaud the residents for giving them the green light.
Now let’s get at it!