(Editor’s note: retiring Senator Brent Cotter (Sask.) on December 11 gave his farewell address to the chamber. He spoke on ethics in public office. Following is an excerpt of his remarks)
I served as the Deputy Attorney General of Saskatchewan in the early 1990s. On the first day I started that job a bottle of champagne arrived from the hotel across the street and also crackers. It was a welcome gift to the new Deputy Attorney General. I thought, “How nice. I wonder what they have in mind.” In this act of incredible equality, I thought I would arrange that we would hold on to this bottle of champagne, and on Friday afternoon at 4:30 p.m, the five of us in the office would each have a drink.
When you’re the Deputy Attorney General, at least in my province, you have somebody as your leading executive assistant. It’s usually somebody whose career gets fast-tracked in the department. That fast-tracking turns entirely on the will of the Deputy Attorney General. Before that morning I had never met the guy whom I had as an executive assistant. His potential speed through in his career depended entirely on me.
I went into my office after this message about the champagne. He knocked on the door and came in, then closed the door, and he said, “You know that bottle of champagne? We’re sending it back. The Department of Justice does not accept gifts.”
I thought I did a pretty good thing. And then I thought, what courage. This guy, not knowing me at all, not knowing how I might react, let me know what the standards of ethics were in that department. Curtis Talbot is his name. I learned from that.
I had a series of direct reports when I worked there, one of them was a guy named Daryl Bogdusovich. These are names that quite possibly are known to Senator Denise Batters. Daryl was the head of the civil law branch. These folks reported to me, and they had to report their vacations to me. Daryl, I thought he was teasing me, would provide these vacation reports: Wednesday, July 28, one eighth of a day; August 7, one eighth of a day.
What happened was Daryl, who had to work long hours, was the key guy in the Government in Saskatchewan responsible for working out payouts when people were laid off. He had a big job, worked weekends, a lot into the nights. On Wednesdays, four of them went golfing. In Saskatchewan, long days, you can play golf well into the evening. They teed off at five o’clock. He left the office at four o’clock, and he’s reporting one eighth of an hour vacation because he left the office an hour early. I wouldn’t have done that actually, but I thought that’s a very good thing for me to learn.
A third one I learned at Prime Minister Trudeau Sr’s funeral. When that funeral took place in Montreal a number of years ago, some of you will be familiar with it, former premiers were invited to come to the funeral, and I was the deputy of intergovernmental affairs and coordinating the Saskatchewan premiers coming. After the funeral, I, one other fellow, former Premier Blakeney, and then-Premier Romanow, at their request went to Schwartz’s Smoked Meat Deli for lunch. They’re not the first people who ever went there.
On government travel, my anticipation is the bill will come, it won’t be a large bill, but I will pay the bill and I will get reimbursed back from the government. The bill is going to be $75. The bill arrives. Allan Blakeney grabbed the bill. He had a gift of arithmetic, and lots of other gifts. He was a Rhodes scholar. He took the bill, immediately looked at it and said, “You owe $14.50, you owe $12.75, you owe $13.”
We all hauled out our money and paid the bill and the government paid not a nickel. It was the way Allan Blakeney ran his government in Saskatchewan. Sometimes people think that social democratic governments are tax-and-spend governments. Allan Blakeney ran the Government of Saskatchewan for 11 years, 11 surpluses, and I think he put his personal stamp on respect for the people’s money.
I learned from that. I ran 12 years of deputy minister departments. I ran 12 surpluses, and most of it inspired by Mr. Blakeney.
