The penalty box

It’s been a bad week for the skating Senators. Maybe they’ll win game four tonight. But even if Mike Duffy laces up and scores a hat trick to save the series with the Penguins, it’s hard to see how those highly paid masters of sober second thought, the non-skating Senators, can mount a comeback in the estimation of the public.

Senator Duffy assured us—just as he was neglecting to tell us that he had accepted a personal cheque from the former PMO head Nigel Wright to repay his housing expenses— that the “old Duff” was back and that therefore Canadians need not worry about his integrity. Somehow, this does not reassure me. The more I hear about the new Duff, the less I am inclined to trust the old Duff, or to believe the two are much different. To paraphrase The Who: “Meet the new Duff…. same as the old Duff.” And was it the new Duff or the old Duff who decided that it was okay to bill the public for time spent campagining for his former party while billing the party as well?

No, Senator Duffy needs to spend some serious time in the penalty box. Sitting in the Senate as an independent rather than a Conservative hardly counts as much of a punishment. So what would count as appropriate penalty box time?

To answer that question, I say take a look at another organization for whom it’s been a bad week: the OPP. One article in last week’s Times caused it enough damage to last a year. To begin with, The Times reported that the OPP sped through Wellington at around 3 p.m. on a weekday afternoon in hot pursuit of what had been described to the officer behind the wheel of the speedster as a break-in in process. Most observers saw it as an appalling lapse in judgment to have risked the safety of innocent bystanders to frustrate a mere property crime.

That’s not the way OPP Sergeant Lee Abrames saw the matter. According to the Times story, his retort was that the officer was operating within regulations. The good sergeant also said that had something bad happened as a result of the officer’s speed, he would be held fully accountable for his actions. Well, with hindsight, that’s a pretty light burden to wear. The point is that someone could well be seriously injured the next time, and holding somebody in the OPP “fully accountable” for “operating within regulations” isn’t likely to do much for that individual’s return to good health. What’s at stake is not the legal authority to act; it’s the need to exercise good judgment while acting—a need that, based on this incident, seems sorely lacking.

Police Services Board Chair Robert Quaiff has probably got the best-informed view in the County. And what he had to say is not reassuring. “We get a lot of young single officers here” said Quaiff. “There isn’t work for their spouses here. So we get the very young and they are hell bent for action— looking to do their job…Given the nature of the crimes here in my opinion, we don‘t warrant the number of officers we have.” It can hardly have been put more plainly. We have too many police with not enough to do, and the younger police often show more testosterone than common sense. Hardly a great combination.

On top of that, we pay our OPP princely wages— which the province sets, and we get to underwrite. A constable third class makes $66,790 and a constable first class who has served for 36 months makes $83,483. And those are just the testosterone- level salaries. Police salaries in the County have doubled in the last 10 years and are likely to go up still more next year, when one-time provincial subsidies of some police salaries are back on the table as the OPP’s contract with the County is up for renewal.

So back to my question. What would count as appropriate penalty box time for Senator Duffy? My answer: if Senator Duffy can’t recognize a waste of public money in his own bailiwick, send him somewhere where he’s more likely to do so. Have him spend a three-month secondment with the OPP and at the end of it, write a 250-word essay on “what I learned about treating the public and public money with respect.” Come to think of it, it wouldn’t be a bad idea if we made sitting in with the Senate part of OPP training. It may induce some greater respect for the value of public money, and it might also introduce young officers to an environment that is untainted—at least by testosterone.

dsimmonds@wellingtontimes.ca