"By their deeds ye shall know them"

I am  slowly and clumsily learning to appreciate the ipad.
Comments are an essential part of the blog. I need them.
Unfortunately I am receiving a spate of trash  as well. Legitimate  comments to the post are occasionally thrown out with the trash.
Others are unpublished because I don't want to be indirectly responsible for the sentiment expressed.
A comment yesterday re-hashed the argument  a person who is not in favour of a Code  of Ethics is afraid of what might be dug up about themselves. It's the kind  of logic Catherine Marshall might  express.
What kind of ethic  would allow such a groundless accusation to be made.
Yet  it is the kind of worthless assumption politicians fear.
Failure to vote in favour of a Code of Ethics means voters will assume an inclination towards corruption.
The  same flawed logic allowed Councillor Ballard to make a baseless accusation against council members Tuesday, on the pretext he was serving  public interest.
The same allowed Councillor Gaertner last term, to believe an application for a grant for her non-profit  youth club business was not a conflict  despite being  a member of Council.
The same allowed  the Council to approve the grant.
The common factor is a Coucillors' ability to believe in their own honesty while doing something patently dishonest,
The problem is not a lack of honesty.
The problem  is  a lack of judgement.
Without judgement, ethics become a hit and miss affair,mostly
miss.
They are  whatever a politician can justify in his own mind; whatever  he thinks he can sell to his own advantage.
The idea municipal politicians can agree to rules governing individual behaviour in every situation is a contradiction in terms.
For example, on Tuesday, a motion to publish Councillors expenses annually failed  A motion to publish quarterly failed. Someone moved to publish  every six months; the majority agreed.
Compromise happened.
Expenses are currently published annually.Councillor Ballard raised  suspicion something was amiss.  Politicians are naturally jittery. It's the nature of the beast.
Ethics written, hard and fast, in a Code, cannot be compromised.
Politics is the art of compromise.
The two cannot co-exist. At best the logic is flawed . At worst a  cynical sham.
The town's first  Integrity Commissioner  was an academic. He was excited  by the opportunity
to  introduce ethics into municipal politics.
He  set up two workshops.
Neither the former Mayor nor chief co-hort attended the first.  The second was not allowed.
At the first workshop I asked the Commissioner how much he knew  about municipal poltics.
He responded he had dealt with "governments with blood on their hands"
The Integrity Commissioner was "stripped of his authority" concurrently with his first decision.
He found the complaint filed by one Councillor and supported by five others, including the former Mayor, was "purely political"