Liberal candidate Richard Mahoney and the impartiality of the civil service
Liberal candidate Richard Mahoney
From the Ottawa Citizen:
Some say Mr. Harper's comments could set off some of public servants' worst fears about a Tory government that could shrink the size of government, cut jobs and privatize operations. Area Liberal candidates jumped on the comments as signals of spending and job cuts in the public service to pay for his election promises.
"He needs $23 billion in savings and that's going to mean public service cuts. So couple that with his attack on the impartiality of the public service as Liberals. It sounds like the old Stephen Harper is back, not the 'evolved' Stephen Harper," said Ottawa Centre Liberal candidate Richard Mahoney.
How horrible for Stephen Harper to think that civil servants are anything but impartial. Clearly Canada's civil servants know the difference between working for a government and working for a party.
And Richard Mahoney, a chief advisor to Paul Martin when Martin was finance minister and a key aide during Martin's campaign to take over the Liberal Party, knows some civil servants.
Like Craig Taylor.
Craig Taylor is a civil servant who works for the Department of Canadian Heritage. In fact, he's an acting director for web and applications development. Sounds like a guy who knows a thing or two about web sites. Here's Taylor's entry in the Government Electronic Directory Services:
Now Richard Mahoney, Liberal candidate for Ottawa Centre, close personal friend to Paul Martin, and friend of Canada's impartial civil servants, has a web site, richardmahoney.ca. Here is the registry record for his web site, or at least the way it looked until recently:
And we can see that impartial non-partisan civil servant Craig Taylor, acting director for web and applications development for Canadian Heritage, put together the web site for Liberal candidate and Paul Martin confidante Richard Mahoney. Craig Taylor also provided his government fax number and his government email address as official contact information for anyone who had questions about Liberal candidate and Paul Martin confidante Richard Mahoney's web site.
Let's ponder the irony of Richard Mahoney's words, criticizing Stephen Harper for "his attack on the impartiality of the public service as Liberals". Because Stephen Harper has no reason to believe that Liberals would try to use civil servants for partisan purposes, and because Stephen Harper has no reason to believe that some civil servants would allow themselves to be used.
Funny thing is, Richard Mahoney is right. When it comes to the impartiality of the civil service, Stephen Harper should stand back and let Richard Mahoney answer some questions. Perhaps Mahoney's friend Paul Martin can stand by him for moral support.
Interestingly, the contact information has been scrubbed clean, and Kieran Green is listed as the main contact, no fax number, and an anonymous gmail address.
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Comments
the A/ stands for acting director, not assistant. In other words, he is the director.
Posted by: eastern capitalist at January 18, 2006 10:15 PM
Me thinks Taylor better start pounding the pavementas soon as possible.
Posted by: at January 18, 2006 10:24 PM
Nice work. I hope you sent a letter to the editor re this story.
Thanks, Angry.
Posted by: Shawn at January 18, 2006 10:31 PM
Thanks, ec, I've made the correction. I always thought it meant "assistant". Learn something new every day.
Posted by: Steve Janke at January 18, 2006 10:31 PM
After so many years of Liberal reign, a sharp dose of Jacksonian democracy would be advisable.
Posted by: WayStemAll at January 18, 2006 10:33 PM
Very interesting, Angry... or are we supposed to use your real name now?
Posted by: Mac at January 18, 2006 10:48 PM
There are (as of 2005) 276 907 people working directly for the federal government. Iam sure we can round off that number somewhere...
Look at all the areas that the federal government has no constitutional authority, yet have a department of... Now some of these people of legit worktodo, no doubt, but most of them spend their days stickin their fingers in the eye's of provincial governments...
Plus there all those crown corps, foundations, and agencies, which may employ just as many people and worse, sometimes compete against private capital companies, and actually take profits and employment out of the economy.
Posted by: Curtis at January 18, 2006 10:52 PM
You have to love the fact that the 'professionals' at the Globe and Star never seem to find these kinds of stories.
Posted by: chip at January 18, 2006 10:52 PM
Easy, Curtis, your point is well noted but part of the reason why the Tories have been consistently at 40%+ in The Polls in Eastern Ontario - the highest level of Tory support in Ontario - and have a shot in Pontiac is because the CPC has opposed the Liberal plan to transfer up to 40,000 civil servant jobs out of the National Capital region. Holding the line on statism seems to be the theme for the first Harper mandate.
Posted by: Anonalogue at January 18, 2006 11:02 PM
The 'professionals' dont know how todo a whois lookup, and most likely, dont even know the whois database exists.
Posted by: Curtis at January 18, 2006 11:04 PM
Time for some re-location benefits for all those who knowingly flip the bird to the taxpayer and get called to account for it ?
Posted by: Floyd Low at January 18, 2006 11:04 PM
The civil service is impartial alright. That's why when the Liberals start running short of cash they try and hit up employees in the Privy Council Office for donations.
http://tinyurl.com/cposz
OTTAWA -- Paul Martin's Liberals have issued an "urgent" call to Privy Council Office staff for their support and donations in the run-up to the Jan. 23 vote.
Liberal party president Mike Eizenga mailed bright yellow teledispatches directly to the office addresses of employees of the PCO, which is supposed to remain non-partisan and non-political.
The memo lays out the Liberal election platform and asks for a minimum $100 donation.
Posted by: at January 18, 2006 11:10 PM
I'd be very curious to see the server logs for FTP traffic from Heritage to Magma's webhost server.
Posted by: OttawaCon at January 18, 2006 11:10 PM
Good catch, Angry!
Mahoney has been accused before of using government of Canada resources to boost his campaign.
The accusations were so numerous, it was actually covered by the Ottawa Citizen.
This guy Richard Mahoney is bad news. He is not only using government resources to boost his campaign, he is directly funded by lawyers and his lobbying clients from Toronto. In fact, 80% of his donations in 2004 were from Toronto lawyers and lobbying clients.
Voters in Ottawa Centre need to ask themselves - who will Richard Mahoney represent? The residents of Ottawa-Centre, or the lawyers and lobbying clients who bankrolled his 2004 campaign?
Posted by: jim in ottawa centre at January 18, 2006 11:11 PM
Just because the Liberals extorted doesn't mean the people at PCO gave. Check out Mahoney's opponent Keith Fountain
http://www.keithfountain.ca/news.asp?newsID=21
Posted by: OttawaCon at January 18, 2006 11:12 PM
It's going to be really interesting to see Mahoney's expense report at the end of the campaign. Because Craig Taylor is a professional web designer, technically the work that he has done for the campaign has to be accounted for as a donation in kind, against the campaign expense limit.
Posted by: Greg Phelan at January 18, 2006 11:15 PM
kieran green was the vp communications for the libelists of ottawa-centre back in 2004. he worked mahoney's communications out of ecto designs (now called association house) a public policy lobbyist group with partners brian guest, james deacey, and sean durkan. guest was martin's director of communications before scott reid (beer and popcorn). (more on the pmo from freedominion at: http://www.freedominion.ca/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=8599 ) green was an editor of imprint, the university of waterloo student rag in 99 and communications director for the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations after that.
kieran is currently working for the canadian federation of agriculture as the communications director. here's a shot of him as editor of imprint http://imprint.uwaterloo.ca/issues/031999/8Fashion/fashion14.shtml
Posted by: Ottawa Core at January 18, 2006 11:16 PM
Should the CPC be successful on Jan 23 they had better get the RCMP to put locks on all government paper shredders and incinerators immediately.
Alex
Winnipeg
Posted by: Alex Mills at January 18, 2006 11:24 PM
Denis Schryburt is listed as one of the people paid by his campaign in 2004. He was paid $73.93, $23.96 and $174.85.
Denis Schryburt also works at Canadian Heritage. He is Special Assistant - Arts Policy.
What was he paid for by Richard Mahoney?
I wonder if there is any connection between Richard Mahoney campaign worker and Canadian Heritage employee Denis Schryburt and Richard Mahoney campaign worker and Canadian Heritage employee Craig Taylor?
Might be a good idea to forward this discussion thread to the Ottawa Citizen, Angry. They already have stuff on Mahoney and his dealings with lobbying and on campaign work from Government of Canada employees.
Posted by: jim in ottawa centre at January 18, 2006 11:26 PM
The Janke-meister scores again!
Posted by: Peter at January 18, 2006 11:31 PM
Canadian Heritage is responsible for Arts and Culture in Canada.
The fact that two Canadian Heritage employees (Denis Schryburt and Craig Taylor) work on Richard Mahoney's Campaign should be explainable right?
Well? What about Richard Mahoney's lobbying work for the Canadian Cable Television Association (CCTA) ? If Canadian Heritage deals with culture, is there a connection to Richard Mahoney's lobbying activities here? Richard Mahoney is also a registered lobbyist for the Canadian Motion Picture Distributors Association. If Canadian Heritage deals with culture, is there a connection to Richard Mahoney's lobbying activities here? What about the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees? Richard Mahoney lobbyed for them as well. If Canadian Heritage deals with culture, is there a connection to Richard Mahoney's lobbying activities here?
I wonder if there's any connection here?
I wonder if the fact that the Canadian Motion Picture Distribution Association donated to Mahoney's 2004 campaign is also connected?
I wonder if the fact that Knight Enterprises (responsible for many productions on FoodTV Canada) donated to Mahoney's 2004 campaign is also connected?
All these questions...
Posted by: jim in ottawa centre at January 18, 2006 11:38 PM
I think this is truly a sad display of partisanship. Civil servants should have the same right to political association that every other Canadian has. Moreover, it only makes sense that a Liberal candidate running in Ottawa would have civil servants working on his campaign, since the government is the biggest employer in the area.
The choice of using a government phone line as the official contact was poor, but lets not call conspiracy because a civil servant chose to exercise his rights and help out on a campaign.
Posted by: Paul at January 18, 2006 11:48 PM
Paul,
Give me a break, you Liberal shill. No one is saying he shouldn't be allowed to participate. He just should do it on his dime, not mine. He used a taxpayer funded email and contact information. He is a web developer. Tell me, is it unfair of me to wonder if he developed Mahoney's website at work?
The issue here is that Mahoney has a responsibility, and he is a complete hypocrite. The registration goes back to 2000.
Posted by: Tired at January 18, 2006 11:58 PM
I also choose to exercise my rights and help out on a campaign, but not while I am at my regular job, being paid by my boss for regular work. My tax dollar shouldn't be paying for this clown to do Mahoney's campaign work.
Posted by: at January 19, 2006 12:03 AM
This is just plain silly. Any civil servant has a right to become active in a campaign. When they started working for the civil service, they didn't give up their right to vote or have an opinion. The issue of impartiality comes into play with how do they perform their work. If you don't have evidence that someone's work is skewed by what party is in government, leave them the fuck alone.
Posted by: at January 19, 2006 12:09 AM
12:09
ANYONE who is in the civil service knows that what he is done is a significant ethical violation. Impartiality must be percieved as impartiality. I would say running a Liberal candidate's website from Heritage Canada is a fairly public departure from impartiality. Can this guy seriously be said to be impartial?
It also appears to be a violation of election law.
Posted by: at January 19, 2006 12:14 AM
What really grinds me is the fact that the feds, last year said they were going to cut 40,000 jobs. Nary a peep about that fact but the
Liebrals and dippers are all over Harper when he says the C S will be restricted to no more of the GDP than the rise in inflation and the population growth and spin it into a massive cut!! Just makes me weak with anger.
Posted by: Dave P from Campbell River at January 19, 2006 12:20 AM
A taxpayer funded email? What a load of shit. He did a friend a favor, wrote in a business instead of personal email - big deal. You guys suck.
Posted by: at January 19, 2006 12:20 AM
Who paid to register the domain name? Who's paying for the site hosting?
Shouldn't Elections Canada be called in on this?
Someone want to drop a dime on this slimeball?
Posted by: B. Mills at January 19, 2006 12:20 AM
Great catch ... once again!
Thanks for your hard work ... I wonder how many undecided voters have been swayed to vote Conservative by your posts.
Posted by: Jose at January 19, 2006 12:22 AM
"He did a friend a favor"
Government should not be about friends doing favors for friends. It should be about being accountable and delivering results for all Canadians, not just people with friends in the PMO.
Liberals seem to have forgoteen that long ago. I am not sure Mahoney ever knew.
Posted by: at January 19, 2006 12:27 AM
Paul, using the telephone and email services paid for by taxpayers for business other than his job is unethical. The fact the other usage is engaging in political activity compounds the issue. Mahoney and Taylor both should know better but that "culture of entitlement" blinds them.
Since you choose to defend him, guess what that means for your credibility?
Posted by: Mac at January 19, 2006 12:36 AM
Thanks Paul, for reminding us how the Liberals dug themselves into this hole labelled "culture of Entitlement"
no, really, it's just a little bit of partisan work on the taxpayers dime.... no really, all I did was take a taxpayers dime.... well with inflation, what's a dime, a quarter won't be missed, right? Jeez what am I to do, the boss asked me if I might do this for him... What might happen if I don't, plus he knows I took a dime or was it a quarter, I can't remember, but at least he doesn't know about the dollar.... better do it.
and so on and so on until it's wads of cash in envelopes. The fact that you don't think it's a big deal is a sad statement and the exact reason that the Liberal Party won't be wiped of the electoral map for a while. How unforunate.
Posted by: DemandMore at January 19, 2006 12:55 AM
This is a perfect example of why there needs to be a house cleaning on the 23rd. "He did a friend a favor". Time to start governing and stop the 'favors'.
Posted by: Platty at January 19, 2006 12:57 AM
Greg said "Because Craig Taylor is a professional web designer, technically the work that he has done for the campaign has to be accounted for as a donation in kind, against the campaign expense limit."
Nope. He's not a professional web designer, he's a civil servant. He's not in business, so his work is volunteer.
However, his volunteer work had to have the approval of his department. It will be interesting to see whether it did. If not, he's in big doo-doo.
Posted by: Patrick at January 19, 2006 01:19 AM
" Any civil servant has a right to become active in a campaign. "
Uh, no. Not even close. The civil service is non-partisan - it serves the government of the day. Recent changes to the legislation governing civil servants made it easier, I think, for civil servants to get involved in a campaign, but they have to have permission to do so - and that permission could be withheld if it could affect their ability to do their job, or be seen to be doing their job impartially. Being an A/Director would be one of those roles where it could be seen to be incompatible with the non-partisan role to be politicking for a particular party or candidate.
Posted by: Patrick at January 19, 2006 01:24 AM
Speaking of professional web design... Steve, what has happened to your site? When I go to the main page, all the sidebars are gone. It is only when I click on a post's permalink that the sidebars and all the fancy graphics appear.
I'm using Windows XP Pro, IE6.
Posted by: Ed Minchau at January 19, 2006 01:39 AM
"And we can see that impartial non-partisan civil servant Craig Taylor, acting director for web and applications development for Canadian Heritage, put together the web site for Liberal candidate and Paul Martin confidante Richard Mahoney."
Fact check: the doc you show is a domain registration record. It means that this guy filled in the form to register richardmahoney.ca, a task that takes about 2 minutes and is unrelated to 'putting together the web site'.
Which still may be too much for a civil servant to do. But if someone plans to run with this you might get further with factual rather than exaggerated accusations.
Posted by: wishful thinking at January 19, 2006 02:34 AM
hmmm...I've been gettin' lots of hits from magma on my blog
Heritage Canada is also responsible for getting out to the public information on our Charter - not that it means anything, just that they haven't exactly promoted it strongly in the last 12 years.
That only means something to me really because I used that fact in a U.N submission on the fed gov not promoting the Charter/Constitution so Canadians are aware of their rights...etc etc
gotta love 'whois'
Posted by: habamusrodentum at January 19, 2006 03:04 AM
This certainly isn't the first time a civil servant has decided to run a little home-based business from a public-funded government office during normal business hours.
Mr. Taylor happens to be a smart business owner who has figured out a way to reduce his operating expenses by having the public pay for his overhead expenses, while either doing 'volunteer work' and/or making a little extra $ on the side while collecting a government paycheque.
So in addition to Mr. Mahoney, how many other clients does Mr. Taylor do work for during his normal business hours? Better yet, how often does he have to work overtime because he's been too busy freelancing between 9-5?
Posted by: JM at January 19, 2006 06:06 AM
I wonder if Craig is one of those people who took "vacation" pay from the federal government to go work on the Liberal campaign?
Posted by: TrustOnlyMulder at January 19, 2006 06:36 AM
Any civil servant caught doing any political work for any party while on taxpayers time or equipment should be fired. I couldn't care less what he does on his own time, but when he is on my time he should be doing the job he is paid for. As for being impartial, that is pure fantasy. Anyone who thinks that the civil service is not liberal friendly is living in a dream world.
Posted by: drvsvs at January 19, 2006 07:39 AM
On the issue of the relative innocence in using an email and a fax number, and of how everyone does a "bit on the side" at work, remember that the government is a different beast. Whereas this would be no big deal if Taylor was a web guy at IBM, he isn't at IBM. Reasonable or not, the government rules are extremely draconian when it comes to maintaining an entirely impartial appearance. This is because some of these candidates will ultimately be their bosses, or will be making decisions on staffing and/or cutbacks.
Volunteering on your own time is OK, but using government resources, even slightly, is forbidden. Today it's the fax machine. Tomorrow it's the industrial photocopier, running off a thousand colour election flyers.
Posted by: Steve Janke at January 19, 2006 07:49 AM
Any EMPLOYEE (vs. contractor) caught doing ANY WORK FOR ANYONE, INCLUDING YOURSELF, while on company time should be FIRED.
Of course if unions are factored in this becomes ALOT more difficult.
Posted by: JM at January 19, 2006 08:37 AM
Wishful thinking, what exaggerated accusations? Do you mean that he entered his government e-mail address? Do you mean that he entered his government fax machine number? Or do you mean that he works for Heritage Canada?
Posted by: NONE at January 19, 2006 08:38 AM
Mistyped my URL, it is accurate now.
Posted by: NONE at January 19, 2006 08:40 AM
Even when I respond to blogs like this from my employers computer work station , I use my personal E-mail address. Technically, my employer would probably not be happy with the time I might waste at work, but as a private sector employer, that discussion is between him and I, not the taxpayer.
Keep up the great work, Angry!
Posted by: john at January 19, 2006 09:00 AM
"....but as a private sector employer, that discussion is between him and I,...."
True. But, if I'm a shareholder of the company I might be interested in knowing as well.
Posted by: JM at January 19, 2006 09:23 AM
What about Simon Dupuis and Matt Eason two senior people on the Mahoney campaign who both work for PMO...wonder if they are on leave...
Posted by: random at January 19, 2006 09:55 AM
If what Craig Taylor has done is so obviously acceptable to some of the commentators, send him an email and find out what he has top say. CC his superiors; they might want to know too.
Posted by: Murray at January 19, 2006 10:48 AM
Even better question - if what Taylor has done was acceptable, why did they scramble to get his name, e-mail, and fax number off of the domain registration?
If he was totally in the clear, why bother changing the domain registration info?
Posted by: Jason at January 19, 2006 11:00 AM
To NONE - Sorry I was unclear. By 'exaggerated accusation' I meant the claim that this guy 'put together' Mahoney's website, when all the domain record shows is that he registered the domain name. Putting together a web site takes days; registering a domain name takes minutes.
If we're going to be sticklers for ethics, we might as well be sticklers for fact too.
Posted by: wishful at January 19, 2006 01:25 PM
Wishful, that's fine, but the point is not that he's set up the site, but that he is using government e-mail address and fax machine to answer any questions about the site.
Government facilites
On government time
No, we're not making this up
We're not allowed to make this up.
Posted by: None at January 19, 2006 02:45 PM
Alex in Winnipeg - what makes you think the shredders aren't already running? Did you all get the story up here about the state the West Wing was in (intentionally) from the Clinton Admin. when the Bush team moved in in 2001? If I was in the gov't, I'd be shredding, shredding, shredding . . . right now.
As Fawn Hall said, "If they didn't want us to shred documents, why did they give us shredders?" Smart girl.
Posted by: Meg Q at January 19, 2006 03:55 PM
Me thinks yall might have some facts wrong. Some have stated that Taylor is a professional web designer. I don't think so. It might be interesting to check some of the facts before you continue. Has anyone contacted Taylor or others concerned? This conversation would be more persuasive if there was some congruency to the facts stated. Frankly, it seems that you have stated opposite, if not false information.
Posted by: loke at January 20, 2006 06:51 PM
 
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