The essence of the concept of ministerial responsibility in our Canadian parliamentary system is that Ministers of the Crown are accountable to Parliament for what takes place within their departments. There is the ancillary concept that Minister’s are also responsible for serious mistakes and acts of malfeasance within their ministries even though they are not personally guilty of any mistake or wrongdoing. It is this last branch of ministerial responsibility that seems to have gone out of fashion. In the olden days it was quite common for ministers to, as the saying went, "do the honourable thing and resign" when serious errors were made within their departments.
It is quite common for members of opposition parties to scream for a minister’s resignation over the least irregularity or mistake even when they know that the minister should not really be forced out of his or her portfolio. In 1985, the CBC broadcast information that some of Canada’s tuna had been tainted. There were immediate calls for the resignation of then-Fisheries Minister, John Fraser. after a few days, Fraser resigned and the opposition was shocked. Fraser was a nice guy, liked by members on all sides of the House and was not personally responsible for the scandal that was dubbed, surprise, surprise, "Tunagate". Some of the harshest criticism at the time was directed not at Fraser but at Prime Minister Brian Mulroney for showing no loyalty to his Fisheries Minister. So although a lot of this "resign now" has more to do with politics than ethics, the trend seems to be now that no one actually has to resign unless a jury somewhere comes back in and says "Guilty".
If the present trend continues, it is hard to envisage that any cabinet minister will be held to account for anything short of being convicted for a serious criminal offence, under Prime Minister Paul Martin. Martin set the standard when he defended himself in the sponsorship scandal by saying that while as Finance Minister, he was totally innocent because gosh, darn, golly, he knew nothing about it. after Judy Sgro who had stepped down as Minister of Citizenship and Immigration in the wake allegations of favourable treatment to a campaign worker, she was hugged and kissed by members of all stripes when the Ethics Commissioner found that she personally knew nothing about the stripper who worked on her election campaign and then miraculously received landed immigrant status. It didn’t seem to matter that Sgro’s executive assistant (as opposed to say, some bureaucrat in Calgary) acted improperly and she should have known.
The prime minister is now going to great lengths to defend Health Minister, Ujjal Dosanjh for his part in the scandal involving the Grewal tapes. although Dosanjh may not have committed a criminal offence and whether or not the tapes had been tampered with the fact remains that he spent an extraordinary amount of time discussing the possible defections of Grewal and his wife and saying such things as they cannot be seen to be making any deals. The only inference that can be drawn from those discussions is that there would be a deal. In times now definitely passed, Dosanjh would have been forced to step aside until the matter was resolved.
Ministers are now only held to the standard of having to resign, not only if they did something, but if there is sufficient evidence to prove it. and it is now perfectly permissible to claim ignorance of what is being done by even their closest aides and advisors. Martin, who campaigned on the promise of fixing the "democratic deficit", has only not lived up to that promise but Canada has become less democratic since he took office. One only has to look at his wheeling and dealing to ensure that his government didn’t fall to realize this.
The decline in ministerial responsibility is probably nothing more than a product of the times that we live in, where "me, me, me" is the prime directive that seems to govern much of society’s actions.
On the bright side, the lack of ministers to be held accountable is probably the least of the problems with our current government.