It's not about Ralph

Should Ralph Goodale resign? As I'll argue below, that's beside the point. But for the record: No. Not on the basis of what we know now.

Three factors weigh in the balance: 1) was the minister involved, or just his department, 2) was there criminal wrongdoing, or merely an inadvertent leak, and 3) is there hard proof of either, or just a suspicion? Obviously answer (a) in each case is the more damning. But it's how they are combined that will decide the minister's fate.

If the minister were personally under criminal investigation, he would clearly have to resign, at least while the investigation was under way. There are ample precedents for this, the most recent of which is Greg Sorbara, the Ontario finance minister. There is no way a minister can carry out his duties with that sort of cloud hanging over him.

But no evidence has been produced that he was personally involved in the income trust affair, nor has he been named as a subject of the investigation.

The second scenario that would require the minister to resign is if it were conclusively shown that someone in his department had leaked news of the income trust decision. It would not matter whether the leak was criminal, or even deliberate: Even an inadvertent leak would be enough.

Ministers should not be required to resign every time their staff screw up, but this was no minor indiscretion. Assuming there was a leak, it was worth tens of millions of dollars to those in the know -- and cost those not in the know the same amount. The convention of ministerial responsibility applies for a reason: When ministers have to pay with their jobs for their department's worst blunders, they have more incentive to see to it that such cockups do not occur.

But the operative words are "conclusively shown" -- preferably by some competent authority like, say, the RCMP. It is not enough to suspect that a leak occurred, and right now a suspicion is all we have. A strong suspicion, to be sure, but not enough to hang a man on.

SO THE issue is not Ralph's personal integrity. I suspect the Liberals would like it if that was the issue: since no one doubts Ralph is clean, they would then be in a position to dismiss the whole affair as a lot of fuss over nothing. The issue is: Was there a leak? If there was, he's gone, criminal investigation or no. If there wasn't, there's nothing to investigate.

Actually, that's not the issue, or not the most important one. The real issue is: Why did we have to wait for an opposition party to petition the RCMP to launch an investigation? Why didn't the minister, or the government, request an investigation themselves?

That, not "why won't the minister resign," is the question the opposition should be asking now. The government can muster an answer to the first: a good man, an honest man, no evidence of personal involvement, etc. But to the second? Er, um, ah...

It is a bit of a mystery. You would think that a government with this government's track record would want to go out of its way to dispel even the slightest suspicion of misconduct, the second it arose. Yet what did they do? Incredibly, they stonewalled. The minister informed us that he had talked to his deputy minister, and was assured nothing was amiss. That's not good enough -- not in a full-service democracy. At best, it was a terrible error in judgment -- politically, as much as anything else. As I argued on The National last night, the public are entitled to draw the appropriate conclusions as to this government's zeal for looking into allegations of wrongdoing in its midst.

One has to ask: What were they thinking? Did they suppose this would not blow up at some point? I can only imagine they were counting on the RCMP to sit on this for the duration of the campaign. Only the RCMP ... disappointed them.

Why the force, so reluctant to investigate the ruling party in past scandals, suddenly turned on its political masters this time is perhaps the most intriguing question raised by this whole affair.