This article explains how auditors general can better serve the accountability relationship between executive governments and the legislatures, and underscores the duty of legislators to install in the law the obligation of full and fair public accounting by governments such that auditors general can audit compliance with the law.

The growing clamor about “accountability” is really attention to responsibility, the obligation to act. Public accountability flows from responsibility, but means primarily the obligation of those affecting citizens in important ways to explain publicly their intentions and reasons before the fact. This obligation is a simple matter of fairness. Accountability also means authorities’ obligations to explain what resulted from what they did and how they made use of the available learning. As accountings, financial statements after the fact are only part of public accountability and don’t prevent harm.

Citizens must have the information they need to sensibly set their levels of trust in authorities. Government has the most important public accounting obligation, because its job is to regulate fairness in society and explain how it is doing it.

When authorities publicly explain their intended outcomes and performance standards, it raises citizen trust in them. But it also produces self-regulation of the authority’s intentions and actions. This is because knowledgeable people and organizations can publicly and convincingly shred identified intentions reasonably seen as leading to harm or injustice. If that happens, the authority loses credibility. Citizens should not trust authorities who will not account publicly, fully and fairly. The public explanation obligation is unassailable not just because it is nonpartisan and tells no one how to do their job; it is an imperative if society is to work properly.

Holding to account means extracting the needed information and doing something fair and sensible with information given in good faith. Currently, executive governments don’t account publicly, fully and fairly, and elected representatives and citizens don’t make them. As a society imperative the requirement to explain publicly is needed to give citizens important information, but also to create beneficial self-regulation by authorities.

Partisan legislators seeking power and concerned with what they view as authorities’ responsibilities have thus far avoided understanding accountability, and may not wish to concede the power of required public explanation to create fairness. As groups, elected representatives give no evidence of wishing to learn how to hold to account effectively. Citizens abdicate their duty to hold to account before the fact, which is simply applying the precautionary principle to civics. Activist organizations give public alerts to create pressure and they propose needed action. But creating a climate of opinion takes time and may not alter authorities’ underlying agendas. In the meantime, harm can continue. Without the public explanation obligation, changing the government won’t necessarily produce greater fairness.

Auditors general audit systems and performance, point out weaknesses and recommend improvements, but they don’t teach legislators how to hold to account. Yet the teaching is nonpartisan and entirely within their mandates in their duty to serve the accountability relationship between government and legislature. Auditors general rightly don’t criticize political policy but they can point out — and have done — that government information given to legislators to sensibly decide policy is inadequate.

In 1796 George Washington wrote to a friend, “I am sure the mass of Citizens in these United States mean well, and I firmly believe they will always act well, whenever they can obtain a right understanding of matters…..” Because governments regulate fairness in society, they must produce a right understanding of how they are carrying out their responsibilities.

But it took two hundred years before we had Dr. Ursula Franklin, our wisest and greatest social activist, reminding us in her 1989 Massey Lectures: “Whenever someone talks to you about the benefits and costs of a particular project, don’t ask “What benefits?” ask “Whose benefits and whose costs?”

Dr. Franklin’s trenchant insight, coupled with Washington’s observation, produces what we can call a public Equity Statement (EqS) for authorities to use to publicly explain before the fact what they intend that would affect the public in important ways, and why they intend it. Armed with reasonably full and fair explanation, whether given voluntarily or extracted, citizens can more sensibly act to commend, alter or halt what is proposed.

In today’s world an equity statement is as good as it gets in meeting George Washington’s criterion of a right understanding of matters, and answering Ursula Franklin’s critical “who” question.

The equity statement sets out:

• who would gain what benefits from what is proposed, and why they should, in both the short and longer term
• who would bear what costs and risks, and why they should, in both the short and longer term,
• assuming the proposal were to go ahead, who would be required to meet what commonsense standards for both performance and public explanation of how responsibilities are being carried out. This includes how the available learning has been applied. In an age where competence of officials appears to be declining, because standards are declining and officials don’t account publicly, fully and fairly, authorities’ intended performance standards have to be publicly identified.

As an example of intentions requiring equity statements, we have governments ideologically pushing ”Public-private sector partnerships” (P3s) for public projects. (And a good question is how the ultimate regulator of society can be someone’s partner.) A simple municipal example is an equity statement by proponents of a property development application. It states what they intend, with their reasons, and states the implications as the proponents see them.

The proponents draft a public EqS  for stakeholder review that primarily includes those in the communities affected. Municipal staff then assess the statement for its fairness and completeness, with provincial and federal staff involved if needed. Those against the proposal can present their own public equity statement. Improved as necessary, the resulting EqS to be used for decision-making then goes to the local councilors. As the elected representatives, their job is to decide the fairness of what is proposed. Done well, an EqS should be reasonable information to guide councilors. It is also the basis for the councillors’ own public accountability. Departing from what an EqS points to in common sense requires the councillor to publicly explain why.

At the provincial and federal orders of government, public equity statements before the fact apply to all intended policies, Bills and regulations that would affect the public in important ways.

The second needed innovation is to have auditors general report to their legislatures (in effect to the public) whether reporting by government that should constitute an equity statement exists, and is reasonably fair and complete. With equity statements required by law, auditors general would simply be auditing compliance. Regardless, auditors general can propose to their legislatures that equity statements be required reporting for adequate explanation by government to the legislature. Because accountability is nonpartisan and not political policy, the Crown can hold approval of Bills that fail to identify the public accountabilities of those with important responsibilities under the Bill.

MPs and provincial legislators serving the public good will see that installing full and fair equity statements in the law is a commonsense obligation of law-makers. No argument can be credibly raised against it. But if legislators stand against installing such a powerful force for fairness, they need to tell their constituents why.

To be effective, the accounting requirement has to be public explanation, accompanied by competent public assessment of the fairness and completeness of the equity statements. Both legislative auditors and knowledgeable activist organizations can do this. Otherwise, a legislature majority will simply carry on doing whatever its leaders instruct it to do. Some citizens may prefer this.

Citizens and activist organizations can form issue-based accountability task groups in their areas of concern to hold authorities publicly to account. They can also publicly propose to authorities basic performance standards for the authority and its agencies that citizens are entitled to see them meet. It takes only gumption and common sense; you don’t have to be a carpenter to tell if a door jamb is crooked.

Henry E. McCandless is General Convenor of the Citizens’ Circle For Accountability (HYPERLINK “http://www.accountabilitycircle.org/”www.accountabilitycircle.org) and the author of A Citizen’s Guide to Public Accountability: Changing the Relationship Between Citizens and Authorities (Trafford 2002). From 1978 to 1996 he was a Principal in the Office of the Auditor General of Canada.