Gagliano no envoy, nor should he be

Jim Travers
Toronto Star 21.3.2002

THERE WAS a time when serving Canada abroad was determined by brilliance and experience, not guilt and innocence.

One of those times was during the great unpleasantness with the original "Axis of Evil". In the 1940s, Ottawa's man in London was Vincent Massey, later to become Canada's first homegrown governor-general. Lester B. Pearson, a future Liberal prime minister, was his affable deputy. Learning his chops in near obscurity as second secretary was Charles Ritchie, a gifted diplomat and now better remembered as the country's finest diarist.

The shimmering intellect that then served Canadians is on indefinite leave here as the foreign affairs committee reconvenes today to consider the offensive appointment of Alfonso Gagliano as Canada's ambassador-designate to unfortunate, long-suffering Denmark.

Blocking any meaningful exploration of his qualifications, the committee's Liberal majority is building a wall around Gagliano by claiming that the opposition is smearing a former colleague who is now an acute embarrassment.

Liberals argue that Gagliano is innocent until proven guilty. Until there is no reasonable doubt that he muscled a crown corporation to hire loyalists, manipulated Quebec advertising contracts to Liberal advantage, or allowed his department to pay more than $1 million for what appears to be two disturbingly similar reports, he remains fit to represent Canada.

That's unmitigated hokum, and Liberals know it. Ambassadors must meet higher standards than regional political bosses or common criminals. Once abroad, heads of mission effectively become this country. They personify its ethics; they wave its flag of values.

Burdened by the baggage of suspicion, Gagliano now stands for none of those things.

Even his wrenching vows of honesty to the committee earlier this week were more evocative of the beleaguered Richard Nixon than they were convincing to Canadians unhappily familiar with the litany of accusations surrounding Prime Minister Jean Chrétien's former Quebec lieutenant.

Gagliano is not the first party hack to be given an unjust reward and he certainly won't be the last. Governments of all partisan persuasion regularly exercise the right to jump the queue of qualified foreign service officers waiting for a post.

When the foreign affairs committee was last agitated enough to challenge a preposterous appointment, its target was Sergio Marchi. A tough politician and underachieving minister, Marchi was given the highly technical job of ambassador to the World Trade Organization and now lives in swank Geneva where he is plotting a run at the Toronto mayoralty.

Giving a Chrétien loyalist a technocrat's job was hardly in Canada's best interest. But sending Gagliano to Denmark is far more cynical, far more damaging to relations with a country that has suffered enough at the hands of our diplomats.

As The Star revealed a year ago, the federal government quietly recalled its ambassador to Denmark in 1995 after an ugly early morning incident involving alcohol and an egregious abuse of power.

Following complaints by a locally hired housemaid that she had been pinned to a couch and her clothes torn, the department promised to investigate and to punish appropriately. It did investigate, but then skirted scandal by bringing Ernest J.A. Hebert home and, remarkably, seconding him to the University of Ottawa without the benefit of a background briefing. Hebert is now retired, but the bad smell lingers.

Once again the government is solving a problem in the most convenient way.

After serving the party well in the province that means the most to the PM, Gagliano, mired in controversy and publicly at odds with other Quebec Liberals, wore out his welcome by January when Chrétien shuffled his cabinet.

Gagliano had to go, but only less shrewd leaders than this Prime Minister humiliate those who know the party's secrets.

The solution was to put the former public works minister out to fertile pasture in low-profile Copenhagen, not at the Vatican, Gagliano's chosen and suddenly too generous reward.

But it is now obvious that Gagliano should not represent Canada even in a country with such limited trade, defence and cultural connections that it inhabits the margins of foreign policy. Gagliano was a poor choice for ambassador in January. New reports about his ethics and the practices of Public Works during his watch make him unacceptable.

Chrétien, who rarely bows to opposition pressure even when it is legitimate, must make a decision. He can do the right thing for Canada and for Denmark by putting Gagliano's appointment on hold at least until the auditor-general investigates allegations that surfaced after the appointment. Or he can do what he usually does by treading political hot water until it cools.

In this case, waiting would not be wrong. There is fire below the smoke of this scandal, fire that can best be controlled by admitting that Gagliano is no Massey, no Pearson, no Ritchie and now no ambassador.