Surprise, surprise.
Another government inquiry will last longer and cost more than anyone expected.
We learned this week the Gomery inquiry into the federal sponsorship scandal in Quebec will cost $60 million, three times the initial estimate.
It's yet another probe the federal government has called to take heat off itself and get back to governing. On this one, the ruling Liberals are accused of slipping about $100 million of the $250-million program into the hands of Liberal-friendly advertising agencies for little or no work during the 1990s.
The inquiry has held more than 60 days of hearings and many more are expected. Some of the more interesting ones will come next week when former prime minister Jean Chretien and his successor Paul Martin are both scheduled to testify. We can expect plenty of finger-pointing and self-serving testimony.
The Jean-and-Paul show is part of a very costly production. About 75 per cent of direct costs to the inquiry are for lawyers who represent witnesses, government mandarins, federal agencies, political parties and third-party interveners. And as with any exercise in real life where fingers are pointed, lawyers are the only real winners.
All of which would make taxpayers the sure-fire losers.
The Gomery commission is not alone in hoovering up millions in tax dollars. In 1997, Chretien pulled the plug on the inquiry into the Canadian military's peacekeeping actions in Somalia after the tab had run up to $20 million. In the '90s, the Krever commission into the contamination of Canada's blood supply cost another $20 million and a royal commission on aboriginal peoples burned through more than $60 million.
Peter Desbarats, the Londoner who was a member of the Somalia inquiry panel, insists there is "no way to cut down on legal expenses" in such inquiries. He says such "fault-finding" exercises must allow those who may be fingered as culpable to have legal counsel.
"They have every right to, because these inquiries can ruin people's reputations and they have every right to a legal defence," says Desbarats, still angry the Somalia probe was cut short. The former dean of the graduate school of journalism at the University of Western Ontario says inquiries must be conducted by independent parties and provided the resources and the freedom to complete their task.
A London lawyer worries about legal costs, however. Norm Peel, who represented the military at the Somalia inquiry, says the $60-million price tag of the Gomery inquiry exceeds the annual $40-million annual budget of the program it is examining.
"The cure is becoming more costly than the cause," he says.
Peel says investigations such as those conducted by members of the United States Senate or House of Representatives are better and more quickly concluded because lawyers aren't allowed to bog down proceedings. He thinks they may be a model for us.
Political scientist Paul Nesbitt-Larking of Huron University College, University of Western Ontario, thinks otherwise. He agrees "formidable" resources are necessary to launch inquiries and the question is "are there deliverables and does it warrant the cost?"
Nesbitt-Larking says there is no simple answer, but he prefers the Canadian system of inquiries with their independent, arm's-length commissioners to the politically oriented ones conducted in the U.S.
"There isn't enough distance between the political process and the prosecution of wrongdoing (in the U.S.)," says Nesbitt-Larking. The Canadian, quasi-judicial system, on the other hand, assures "the perception of independence," he says. And the American system allots vast sums of money for members of the Senate and House of Representatives for investigations they are expected to undertake.
"If you want to look at it in terms of value for money," he says, "Canada's government brings tremendous value for money." In relative terms, the cost of Canada's system is "peanuts."
Nesbitt-Larking concedes there are "extraordinary costs" for inquiries, but "this is the expected corollary of having a slimmed-down system in the heart of Parliament itself."
Hmmm. Well, it still hurts to know so much of our tax money goes into inquiries.
Let's just hope with this Gomery probe we get better value for money than the federal government did with its advertising dollars in Quebec.