Mary Dawson, the Federal Conflict of Interest and Ethics commissioner last week cleared Finance Minister James Flaherty of any impropriety in the hiring of a writer for the 2007 federal budget speech.

As finance minister, Flaherty must present a budget to the Commons every year. It usually lasts the better part of an hour. Flaherty doesn’t actually write the whole thing word for word himself.

In 2007 it was felt that none of the 3,852 employees in the department were up to doing the job for him, so they went outside the government for someone.

The minister’s office recruited communications expert, Hugh MacPhie, from Toronto.

By pure coincidence, Mr. MacPhie happens to be a former political organizer for Flaherty, back when Flaherty was in Ontario provincial politics.

MacPhie was awarded his contract without having to go through the normal tender process for a contract of this size.

It was no small potatoes contract either. MacPhie was paid $122,430 to help prepare a 22-page speech. It was no snap job. Department records reveal Mr. MacPhie worked about a month on the speech.

It was a fine speech, very well written. The minister sounded most eloquent. That was the speech in which Flaherty is best remembered as saying that as long as he is finance minister there will never be a budget deficit.



But then a bunch of Opposition MPs, who have no ear at all for a great speech with fine turns of phrases, and have no idea how the Conservative government operates, went and complained to Commissioner Dawson about how the contract was awarded.



MacPhie didn’t help matters any by going around telling the news media that he had been awarded seven or eight contracts totalling about $320,000 since Flaherty had been minister.

Ms. Dawson a former deputy minister with a vast experience in how government contracts should be awarded, appointed in 2007 by Prime Minister Stephen Harper on the basis of her tremendous skill, conducted the investigation.

Her report came out last week as the snow fell on Ottawa.

She completely exonerated Flaherty of any and all impropriety in the awarding of the contract to MacPhie.

She was categorical: Flaherty had nothing to do with the hiring of MacPhie.

He did not put pressure on his officials. He did not even call them. She knew, she wrote, because they told her so.

It all happened by co-incidence.

Conclusion: Flaherty is as white as the driven snow falling on Ottawa.

However, she noted, there had been a little “lack of rigor” in the awarding of the contract, so from now on, we’ll have more “rigor.”

And she noted, the whole business left Flaherty “vulnerable” and we can’t have that, so “measures will be taken” to prevent future vulnerabilities of this kind.

And the white, white snow continues to fall on Ottawa this week, gently covering everything.