Ethics Aren’t Dead. They’re Just Hiding.
An editorial from a small local newspaper out west was sent to me by a reader this week. The paper in question is the Prince George Citizen:
To our shock and dismay, multiple incidents of plagiarism were uncovered from work over the last number of months. The staff member plagiarized various online new publications, while writing opinion pieces that appeared in this space. Entire paragraphs were copied and then blended into articles, removing a word here and there, or adding a clause to link certain phrases, but leaving the words of the original writer all or mostly intact, without attribution to the original writer or publication.
As of Tuesday morning, that news staff member is no longer employed at this newspaper.
Well done, Prince George Citizen. A bit over the top, mind you. I can think of a much more important paper than the Citizen which showed us that when a minor charge like serial plagiarism comes along, there’s certainly no need to fire anyone as long as the writer in question says it was inadvertent and is willing to print a vaguely worded apology.
On a similar note, the manager of a Vancouver real estate company just resigned, saying he was accepting formal responsibility for two employees who pretended to be buyers in order to make the company’s homes look more in demand than maybe they really were.
Managerial responsibility? What’s that?
I mean, it’s not like a manager should be expected to resign if, for instance, he sends his staff to impersonate new Canadians at a citizenship ceremony for the benefit of the news cameras or anything.
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No, they are dead, at least with the current group in charge.
To give you another example (I assume you don’t live in Toronto as otherwise I’m sure Mayor Ford would have made it into your columns):
Mayor Ford was accused of soliciting donations for his Football Charity while wearing his Councilor’s hat, which was a violation of the ‘Conflict of Interest’ bylaws that were put in place after the Computer Leasing scandal that took place under Mel Lastman.
His defense?
a) He wasn’t aware of the bylaw
b) He hadn’t read the booklet given to him 10 years earlier when he first became a councilor
c) He ignored repeated e-mails from the ethics councilor on the issue because, in his own mind, he hadn’t ‘personally’ benefitted from the contributions, so as far as he was concerned, the bylaw didn’t apply to him.
d) He raised the matter in council when he became mayor and then both spoke and voted for the motion to rescind the penalty imposed on him (again, another conflict of interest as per the bylaw, but … Well, see above).
The judge ruled against him and ordered him removed from office and also ordered that he could not run for mayor again during the current term.
Remarkably, the judge issued a clarification the next day, indicating by “current term”, he meant ‘while Mayor Ford was still in office’. So, it seems what he REALLY meant by the phrase ‘current term’ was that why Ford was in office, he could not run or be appointed to replace himself (a logical absurdity). However, once he WAS removed, he could run again.
This was further watered down upon appeal where the judges decided that municipal councils did not have the power to impose ‘conflict of interest’ penalties on their councilors. Hence Ford did not have to repay the $3,000 donated to his charity. (Note that Ford is a millionaire, his father having owned a very successful printing business.)
Immediately afterwards there were some noises made about having to “fix” this problem where municipal councilors no longer have any restrictions on how they collect money in Ontario.
But so far nothing has been done about it.
MoS
Or what about Harper who has a hack from Ottawa impersonating a resident of PEI to help pack the Senate?
G.J.W.
Canada is rotten to the core with corruption. Most Canadians say. Harper cheated to win the election, with his robo-call scam. The robo-call scam, has leached into the Saskatchewan Tory’s too. Guess what works for some Tories, works for all Tories.
Good grief!!! Harper is no Conservative. Harper was Policy Chief for his, Northern Foundation Party of 1989. He was linked with Christian Fundamentalists, among other dubious links.
Corruption starts at the top of the food chain and, leaches into every nook and cranny of, every province there is. Corruption, lies, deceit and thieving, goes on in every level of government.
When tax payers are paying for property for Conservatives, that should be the very last straw. But, it won’t be. Harper approves of all his, corrupt peoples spending.
In BC we have been betrayed by, the Campbell/Clark BC Liberals. Betrayed by Harper and his, so called Cons. Is BC’s final betrayal, the F.N. signing on with the Enbridge pipeline?