Corruption in Canadian Government and Its Path to Despotism
Corruption in Canadian Government and its Path to Despotism
Increasingly, stories and articles are coming to light about the secretive dealings going on behind the closed doors of our government. Although Canada has long been viewed and portrayed as an honourable, ‘clean’ and upstanding nation, evidence is proving that Canada is worse off ethically than many countries around the world. As said by columnist Valerie Gibson: "A British politician is usually caught with his hand up a woman 's skirt while a Canadian politician is usually caught with his hand in the till."
Government and corporate corruption has long existed in our world. As humans, we have always done our best to get what we want, even if that means disregarding our moral conscious for a while. The Canadian government is no different, although many of us view it as an organization of moral truth, there are many publicized situations in which our government has been caught ‘red handed’ in the process of conducting backroom deals. Because of this constant presence of corruption in the world’s governments, businesses, and civil societies, an organization was formed in 1993 named Transparency International. Now present in over 100 countries Transparency International’s goal is to bring about change through corruption awareness and eventually eradicate corruption from our world. Annually, Transparency International posts their Corruption Perception Index, ranking countries in order of how dishonest their public sectors are observed to be. From 2010 to 2011, Canada fell from 6th place to 10th place on this index, begging the question: what has our government done to deserve this surprising drop in rank? In an article released by The Globe and Mail in early 2011, it said
“In a report to be released Tuesday, the group singled out Canada as the only G7 country that has been stuck at the bottom of bribery-fighting rankings since TI began issuing its reports in 2005.
“Unless there is strong political will to
Increasingly, stories and articles are coming to light about the secretive dealings going on behind the closed doors of our government. Although Canada has long been viewed and portrayed as an honourable, ‘clean’ and upstanding nation, evidence is proving that Canada is worse off ethically than many countries around the world. As said by columnist Valerie Gibson: "A British politician is usually caught with his hand up a woman 's skirt while a Canadian politician is usually caught with his hand in the till."
Government and corporate corruption has long existed in our world. As humans, we have always done our best to get what we want, even if that means disregarding our moral conscious for a while. The Canadian government is no different, although many of us view it as an organization of moral truth, there are many publicized situations in which our government has been caught ‘red handed’ in the process of conducting backroom deals. Because of this constant presence of corruption in the world’s governments, businesses, and civil societies, an organization was formed in 1993 named Transparency International. Now present in over 100 countries Transparency International’s goal is to bring about change through corruption awareness and eventually eradicate corruption from our world. Annually, Transparency International posts their Corruption Perception Index, ranking countries in order of how dishonest their public sectors are observed to be. From 2010 to 2011, Canada fell from 6th place to 10th place on this index, begging the question: what has our government done to deserve this surprising drop in rank? In an article released by The Globe and Mail in early 2011, it said
“In a report to be released Tuesday, the group singled out Canada as the only G7 country that has been stuck at the bottom of bribery-fighting rankings since TI began issuing its reports in 2005.
“Unless there is strong political will to
Cited: -“Canada Slips Down Global Corruption Ranking”.CTVNews.ca. na. Dec 1st 2011.Web. November 30th 2012. < http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada-slips-down-global-corruption-ranking-1.734301> -Gibbons, Kenneth. “Corruption”. Historica Dominion .na.na.Web. December 1st 2012. < http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/articles/corruption> -Sher, Julian.“Canada Ranked Worst in G7 Nations in Fighting Corruption, Bribery”. The Globe and Mail. May 24th 2011. August 24th 2012.Web. November 30th 2012. -“The Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act”. Department of Justice Canada. March 8th 2012. na. Web. December 2nd 2012. -Transparency International. UK National Chapter. 2012. Web. December 1st 2012.