OTTAWA - In the nose-to-the-grindstone, number-ridden world of a Finance Department official, pep talks aren't generally part of the gruelling daily schedule.
But after one of their own was charged Thursday with criminal breach of trust, sources say deputy minister Rob Wright organized several meetings with staff to answer their questions and temper the angst.
Senior bureaucrat Serge Nadeau, someone almost every employee there was familiar with, is alleged to have played the stock market using inside information following an RCMP investigation.
Staff in the relatively small government department housed in a downtown highrise all know each other, explains one Finance official, and the charges severely rattled the ranks. As the bureaucrat describes it, they were all "thrown for a loop'' in what was already a busy time in preparation for the federal budget.
When workers returned to their desks Friday, there were pained glances and the shaking of heads across corridors and in the elevators.
"Words like boondoggle never get attached to Finance,'' said the official. "At Finance, you never expect things to go off the rails.''
The shock waves were not confined to the Finance Department. Everywhere in the public service, news of the charge against Nadeau spread like wildfire. Memories are still fresh of the bad rap the public service got over the sponsorship scandal, which ultimately produced only one conviction from within the ranks.
The inference that there was a problem to be fixed lived on with the hundreds of new accountability and anti-conflict rules that were brought in under both the Liberals and the Conservatives.
"You walk a few blocks away and there are a lot of people who think this is just par for the course, which is unfortunate because it's just not true,'' said one bureaucrat. "This is one more chink in the armour in the image of the public service.''
Ian Green, a retired senior bureaucrat with 25 years in the public service, notes that the allegations would have come as a great shock to a department known as the "bedrock'' of government with a "stellar reputation.'' He says that if anything, the emergence of stricter codes of conduct such as the Federal Accountability Act make the bureaucracy reach even higher.
"The level of scrutiny and transparency required in the public services is going up,'' said Green, the chair of public service governance at the Public Policy Forum.
"My sense is there's been a rising bar of accountability in the public service, and the public service continues to be an organization predicated on integrity and earning the public trust.''
But even with the existence of the Federal Accountability Act, the odd bad apple in an organization of tens of thousands shouldn't come as a surprise, says former clerk of the Privy Council Mel Cappe.
Just as speed limits don't deter some drivers, the most stringent rules won't stop everybody from wanting to break them, Cappe said.
"What we really need is a campaign to get people to slow down,'' said Cappe, president of the Institute for Research on Public Policy.
"Part of it is enforcement, but part of it is a respect for others and a respect for the road. Part of this is about respect for and honouring this long and deep tradition in Canada of public service, that people work in government to promote the public interest.''
