This letter was to point out the lack of parliamentary understanding of public accountability and its service to the public good. The Editor, Hill Times Letter in the Ottawa Hill Times 5 Dec.05 29 Federal Election: Preaching Accountability But Ducking It In plain common sense, public accountability is the obligation of authorities to explain publicly, [...]
Archive of posts filed under the Journal Contents category.
Calling Leaders to Account
This op-ed arose because politicians mired in ritual avoid understanding public accountability yet it is an imperative in society Op-ed in the Victoria Times Colonist of 21 November 2005 Calling Leaders to Account by Henry E. McCandless Be on your guard. The next federal election campaign will be full of “accountability.” The Liberal government is [...]
An Article on Accountability in a National Journal
[Originally published in October, 2003] In Issue 2 of the Journal we noted that the 2001 Massey Lecturer chose not to say what she meant by “accountability” while using the word nearly a dozen times in the first 10 pages of her published Lectures, “The Cult of Efficiency.” The problem is not the academic rule [...]
Public Accountability in a Minority Government
by Henry E. McCandless [Reprinted from Canadian Parliamentary Review, Autumn 2004] Minority governments provide parliamentarians with a better opportunity than majority governments to hold the executive effectively to account. This article argues that the government will no longer be able to rely on its majority in parliament to avoid adequate answering for its actions. Nor [...]
Ottawa Needs to Get Tough with Provinces on Health care
By Henry E. McCandless [Op-ed in the Victoria Times Colonist 13 September 2004] Ottawa Needs to Get Tough with Provinces on Health care In the bickering between the provinces and the federal government over conditions attached to federal health funding, public accountability has been purposefully left out — the obligation to answer publicly and adequately [...]
Accountability comes down to issues of control
This op-ed intends to show that first ministers (1) have the obligation to know and exercise reasonable management control and (2) can install adequate public explanation as an obligation of their ministers and the senior civil service, and thus save themselves time an effort in damage control caused by their ministers by saying to the [...]
Public Accountability and Disclosure Activism
[Originally published in March, 2003] Workshop notes for the Escalating Peace conference, Ganges, Saltspring Island, BC, 5 October 2002 Henry E. McCandless, Citizens’ Circle for Accountability henrymccandless@accountabilitycircle.org I. Overview of Public Accountability The start of any discussion or inquiry is to know what’s going on. So what is the common denominator in all the horror [...]
Keeping the Meaning of Public Accountability Clear
[Previously published in March, 2003] The meaning of public accountability argued in the Citizen’s Guide is based on the definition of accountability given in the 1975 Report of the Independent Review Committee on the Office of the Auditor General of Canada (Wilson Committee): “Accountability in its simplest terms is the obligation to answer for a [...]
Defending the Internet as Endangered Commons
[Previously published in March, 2003] A new global conflict is emerging among proponents of opposite views of the nature of systems, closed or open. The conflict flows from an epistemological shift that affects worldviews in general. Closed systems are mechanistic and are designed or authored from outside of themselves. Open systems are structured dynamically from [...]
Mapping Public Accountabilities
[Originally published in February, 2002] In this first edition of the Journal we set out, borrowing from the examples in the Citizen’s Guide, broad responsibility areas for which public answering is missing or inadequate. The purpose is to stimulate readers to identify others; to identify more specific important responsibilities within areas that the Journal maps; [...]
