By Daniel Veniez

Reporting on the auditor general’s devastating critique of the Harper government’s rank bungling of the F-35 procurement, Steve Chase of the Globe and Mail wrote, “The criticism has the Tories scrambling to rescue the Harper government’s reputation for fiscal probity.”

After a solid six years in office and an unmistakable record to show for it, I confess that I am truly at a loss to understand why anyone would think Harper and his government is in any way “competent”.

The very notion that Harper somehow maintains a “reputation for fiscal probity” in certain circles is a genuine head-scratcher. It reminds me of what my mother used to say: “Just because you tell a lie often enough, it doesn’t make it true."

If there’s one thing we know for sure about Stephen Harper, he is in the myth-making business. By far the biggest whopper is that the Conservative government is a “competent fiscal manager”. That of course is followed by another doozy: that they are “open, honest, transparent, and accountable”.

Despite substantial evidence of cost overruns and engineering deficiencies, Conservative ministers and MPs have told Parliament for years that the F-35 aircraft was the best and most cost-effective option.

They were steadfast in defending the indefensible: namely, that the largest procurement in Canadian history could be undertaken on a noncompetitive, sole-source basis.

This argument turned even the semblance of logic and common sense—not to mention the principle of prudent and competent management of public money—on its head. Inexplicably, the government’s designated mouthpieces kept parroting those unbelievable lines.

Then came the supersize-me spinning: “We need new jets because the Russians are a danger to our sovereignty."

In one of the last refuges of the morally and intellectually bankrupt Conservative scoundrels, they liked to hide—as they always do—behind the always safe harbor of “supporting our brave men and women in uniform”.

It’s the same numbing mindset that leads another senior minister to reply to a sensible question on the substance of a profoundly intrusive piece of legislation: “You’re either with us or with the child pornographers!”

Demagogues instill a manufactured fear to advance an empty, cynical agenda. They masquerade as a determined and focused government, when the reality is that charade masks an intellectual emptiness and moral bankruptcy.

In such as culture, there is no room for rational, civil and fact-based argument. This is more serious than political jockeying. It is the core of what competent and honest management is. And as fundamental to our parliamentary democracy, it strikes at the very essence of ministerial accountability.

For years, the government, through Harper and several senior and junior defence ministers has basically said, “Trust us, we know what we’re doing.” They held firm to the proposition that the F-35 represented great value for money, and that the $9 billion earmarked for 65 planes is the right number and there will be no cost overruns.

They also argued that stealth capability was necessary to patrol the Canadian Arctic.

That’s another one I frankly never quite got. Why must a patrol aircraft be invisible to outside threats? Isn’t their very visibility deterrence? And what has changed so dramatically in the geo-political landscape that required stealth capacity in the high Arctic? That rationale has never been explained to Parliament.

The government assured us time and again that the selection process for the replacement aircraft for the CF-18 was rigorous and protected the taxpayer. And Peter MacKay and other members of the government viciously ridiculed and blackballed anyone who had the audacity to dare question their superior judgment and wisdom on the file.

On Tuesday, the auditor general did that and much more. National Post columnist John Ivison wrote that the “saving grace for the Conservatives is that defence ministers are made to look like stooges, rather than complicit”. How humiliating.

The message track now is: “Geez, sorry folks, the bureaucrats didn’t tell us the truth. We were just telling the House what they told us to say. That’s not our fault.”

In any well-led and managed organization, such a scathing report would result in the immediate termination of those in charge. And if Harper had any respect for the fundamental principle of ministerial accountability, he would demand the immediate resignation of his defence minister, MacKay.

No one expects a minister to micromanage a procurement process. But a proper process should have been in place to ensure that Canadians receive full value for tax dollars.

Ministers should be sufficiently engaged in the affairs of their departments to insist on adequate transparency, fairness, and efficiency in procurement procedures. Ministers should ask questions—lots of them—to make sure they are on top of these large files and they are being managed in the public’s interest.

As the auditor general pointed out, the government was asleep at the switch with respect to ensuring the maximum possible leveraging of public funds to support and nurture our national aerospace and technology sectors. Throughout this painful process, our national government looked like a lapdog to the Pentagon.

Canadian blood and treasure has earned us the right to make our own decisions in our national interest.

As we have come to expect, the government is blaming it all on the bureaucracy. There is no accountability for this debacle from the pretend high priests of “openness, accountability and transparency”.

This morning, we are supposed to suspend our collective judgments yet again and believe that the vast machinery of the Government of Canada apparently didn’t know what was going on in the bowels of DND. In this, a massive, multibillion dollar procurement, no one around the cabinet table—including the prime minister himself—asked the hard questions for over two years.

We are supposed to believe that none of them knew what was going on. Neither, we are told, did the Privy Council Office, the Ministry of Finance, the Treasury Board Secretariat, or the Department of National Defence.

That just doesn’t pass the smell test. But then again, there is much in Harper’s Ottawa that doesn't—including the idea that a rogue junior political operative developed a systematic national campaign to commit a fraud against Canadian voters.

And pigs fly.

For at least two years, the Harper government has been defending its untenable position on the F-35 question with a fierceness seen only in the justification of billions of dollars for new prisons we don’t need and $50 million worth of gazebos and outdoor toilets funded by the taxpayer in the president of the Treasury Board’s riding.

These are the same people that grew the bloated federal bureaucracy by another 30,000 people, increased spending by double digits from their first day in office, drove us into a structural deficit, and piled on new debt that now stands at a record $560 billion.

Alan Williams, the former assistant deputy minister for procurement at National Defence said last week that the F-35 procurement was “hijacked” and rigged. For well over a year, the Harper government has publicly and ruthlessly trashed him, and other outstanding public servant, Parliamentary Budget Officer, Kevin Page.

On Tuesday, the auditor general vindicated both of them.

What I still fail to grasp in this F-35 procurement fiasco is how a so-called free enterprise government that purports to believe in the efficiency of competition should have spent so much political capital defending the awarding of a massive contract without any competition whatsoever. It simply defies all logic, common sense, and certainly is contrary to any reasonable definition of managerial competence and leadership. And this is a government with a “Reputation for fiscal probity”?

Can someone please tell me what I am missing, here?

Daniel Veniez was the Liberal candidate in West Vancouver–Sunshine Coast–Sea to Sky Country in the 2011 federal election. Follow him on Twitter @danveniez.